Petting mountain lion cubs???

[eisely 13]

Some of you may have seen or heard this story. This falls into the category of "how stupid and lucky at the same time can one human being get?"

 

I wasn't going to post this until I saw the bit about the horoscope reference. Maybe as part of our preparations for treks we should consult the horoscopes for all our scouts, particularly Leos.

 

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FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. Saying he "wasn't scared at all", a self-described homeless man told KCAL 9 reporter Michele Gile in an interview that he tried to pet three mountain lion cubs because he "was fascinated by them" and "because I'm a Leo...I'm a lion, too."

 

Kevin Lassiter, 47, is lucky the mother lion considered him kin. The worst Lassiter got was a nasty swipe on his arm. He could have been killed.

 

Still, Lassiter told Gile his personal safety was never in question. "I was never worried about it," Lassiter said, "I saw the little babies ...and I just wanted to say hi. And here comes mom and she wacked me in the arm."

 

Authorities Wednesday called off the search for a mountain lion and three cubs on Borrego Trail in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park.

 

The victim was being treated for superficial wounds at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills. Lassiter said he needed 27 stitches to close his wounds. He was also given a rabies shot.

 

 

Richard Bales, who manages a gas station in the area, said the victim came to his business bleeding profusely from his right arm.

 

"He had three ... scratches along the arm, about four or five inches long," Bales said. "And he had blood all over his clothes, and it was getting all over the floor. He explained that he was in the park across the street and had seen a mountain lion, and he apparently reached to pet it and that it scratched him. We went ahead and rendered first aid. We tried to stop the bleeding and we went in and called 911 to let the sheriff and medical personnel know so that we could bring assistance to him."

 

Bales said the man is a regular customer and he walks with a cane and has some paralysis.

 

Park rangers, sheriff's deputies and Department of Fish and Game personnel, with the help of a helicopter, were searching the area.

 

The park has been closed, along with Foothill Elementary School, which is less than a mile from the area, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

 

"If it happened the way the victim stated, he should consider himself very lucky to walk away with minor injuries," Amormino said. "If the mountain lion did scratch him, it was a provoked incident, and we're probably not going to do anything" to the mountain lion.

 

Park rangers, sheriff's deputies and Department of Fish and Game personnel, with the help of a helicopter, were searching the area.

 

The park had been closed, along with Foothill Elementary School, which is less than a mile from the area, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

 

By 4:30, the search was called off and the Wilderness Park re-opened to the public.

 

Gile also asked Lassiter if he would ever pet a mountain lion again and he said, deadpan, "No, I will not."

 

[John-in-KC 311]

Is this a Forrest Gump moment (stupid is as stupid does)???

 

OR

 

Is this a Darwin Awards Honorable Mention moment (he survived after all)???

 

eisely reported ... you decide

[Gold Winger 9]

They're so cute and cuddly, why wouldn't you want to pet them? Heck, if you come across bear cubs in the wild, you just pick them up and hug them, don't you?

[Bob White 20]

I was at Yellowstone National Park in 1983 with a bus load of Scouts on our way to the World Jamboree in Canada.

 

During lunch I was talking with a park Ranger about a number of different things. One being, that very morning we had watched a visitor get flipped into the air by a Bison that he gotten to close to while taking a picture. So I asked the Ranger "'what was the dumbest thing you ever saw a vistor do trying to relate to a wild animal."

 

One time" he said, "we had a mother trying to get a picture of her small child with a black bear cub that had wandered into camp, so she spread honey on the 3-year-olds arm in order to get the cub to lick at it." Wanna guess what happened next? They were lucky that the boy was not killed, the arm was badly mauled by the bear.

 

Here's the thing about common sense...it ain't common at all.

 

 

 

 

[packsaddle 753]

People do some dumb things and I can plead guilty to some of them myself. In my case it has usually involved some kind of machine, not a carnivore.

But I found this on Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/bearmaul.asp

 

Now there's no way to know for sure if this story has a factual basis but the lesson is clear enough to warrant the caution. What I CAN say for sure is that I heard the story when I was in Yellowstone in 1965 but not in 1957. FWIW.

I have personally seen parents try to put their child on the back of a bear for a photo (Great Smoky Mountains NP). Thankfully, I did not see the child subsequently killed, the bear merely ran away.