Working out in the wilderness of Canada isn’t without its perils. There’s the cold, there’s the lost, 20-year-old Norwegian girls, and there are the wild animals. Attacks from huge grizzly bears, and coyotes are, sadly, relatively common.

However, Mountain Lion attacks are relatively rare. However, that’s exactly what happened to these pipe workers, in an incident that almost killed 31 year old Stephen Campbell.

“I felt the cougar bite into my skull, and sink its claws into the side of my face.”

Talking to Global News about the attack, Campbell said “I felt a weight on my back and I thought, initially, one of the boys was coming around to horse around. It happens a lot. But then I felt the cougar bite into my skull, and sink its claws into the side of my face.”

Realising something was amiss from his screams of pain, Stephens co-workers leapt to his defence, fighting the Cougar off with their bare hands.

They managed to get the big cat off their pal, who’d been slashed in the throat and almost had his ear bitten clean off, for long enough for them all to get to the safety of their van, where they locked themselves in.

But the Mountain Lion wasn’t finished with the pipe workers. One of the guys left the safety of the truck to see if the Cougar had exited the site, and the big cat pounced again. It pinned the worker to the floor and started mauling his shoulder before he escaped to the safety of the van once again.

Still hungry, the Cougar then hid under the trailer of the van, presumably waiting for round three to start. It stayed there until the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived and euthanised the beast. 

After being checked over by medics, and stitched back together, the men are now recovering well.

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