The puma was not happy with the tranquilizer dart fired at her (5 photos + 1 video)
Travis Legler from Arizona, a hunter who helps capture and collar animals for research, posted a fascinating video. A biologist from the Arizona Game and Fish Department asked him to help catch a cougar in the Kaibab Wildlife Refuge (this is in the Grand Canyon) and install a collar on it. Travis couldn't refuse.
But, as they say, something went wrong. He and the biologist tracked down the puma, Travis quietly crept up to the crevice in which she was hiding and shot her with a tranquilizer dart. The animal felt cornered and growled.
After the shot, the puma, in theory, should have fallen asleep. But she turned out to be strong and violent - she jumped out of the crevice, flying over Travis and almost hitting him. If she had jumped on him or simply touched him with her weight, she could have pushed him down the cliff.
“You can't see it in the video, but I was standing on a two-foot by two-foot platform with a 150-foot drop behind me,” Travis says. “So if the cat flew into me with all its might, then we could fall down together.”
The biologist, who wanted to put a collar on the animal for research purposes, also suffered a lot of fear: the cougar jumped over his head, climbed a little higher and hissed just a couple of meters away. Since the tranquilizer did not take effect immediately, the upset animal rushed in horror between the two men, and then descended 15-18 meters and lay down on the ledge below.
Travis helped the biologist down to the sleeping cougar. He took samples, put a collar on the animal for research purposes and administered a reverse drug to wake the animal. After that, all that was left was to move to a safe distance.
Travis Legler called the incident one of the most unusual and stressful he has ever experienced.