Metallica is a band that is well known for the intensity of their songs. They are one of the most popular heavy metal bands of all time. It turns out though, that in addition to being really enjoyable to rock out to, their music also has another useful side effect — scaring off cougars.
That’s what 45-year-old Canadian woman, Dee Gallant, discovered when she went hiking on Vancouver Island recently.
It’s an area that is well known for its diverse wildlife populations, and unsurprisingly, after walking for a while, Gallant couldn’t help but notice a cougar was stalking her and her dog, Murphy.
It was about an hour into her hike when she first turned around and spotted the large cat staring back at her.
“I looked over to the right and there it was, I couldn’t make it out at first and thought ‘oh that is a strange color, that’s not a tree.'” Gallant told KelownaNow.
Shortly after, she realized what it really was — a hungry predator.
At first, she was excited by the siting. Cougars are very majestic animals and it’s not often that one stumbles across them in the wild. However, they are also incredibly dangerous. Gallant whipped out her phone and started recording the cougar while she made hissing noises in an attempt to scare it away.
“There’s a cougar watching me right there,” she can be heard saying in the video. “Get out of here. Go on! Get! Bad kitty!”
However, the cougar completely ignored her.
“It was crouched down, doing that kind of prowl, predator walk that they do — that was when I waved my arms and yelled ‘hey, you stop!’ and it did,” said Gallant.
Her dog, Murphy, was no help at all. In fact, he was completely oblivious. The wind was blowing in the opposite direction so he hadn’t yet caught the cougar’s scent.
As a last-ditch effort to scare away the ferocious animal, Gallant decided to try something totally random.
The cougar was obviously not phased at all by her shouting and waving, so instead, she started blasting the band Metallica through the speakers on her phone. It was a move that quite possibly saved her and her dog’s lives.
The song she used was “Don’t Tread On Me'”.
Between the heavy guitar riffs and the drums hammering away in the background, it’s pretty intense. Pretty much as soon as Gallant began playing the track, the cougar took off. It hated it!
“I thought it was the noisiest thing on my phone that would probably scare it, that was also the message I wanted to convey to the cougar,” joked Gallant. “As soon as the first notes blared out it ran into the bush.”
It was a very close call. Gallant recalls that the cougar was about “three meters long from nose to tail”. They say once you see a cougar you’re in trouble. They basically only make themselves known in the final seconds before they attack and things could have easily gone much worse.
In the end, the only thing that saved the two of them was Metallica’s aggressive heavy metal song. It’s something that we’ll definitely have to keep in mind if we are ever doing any remote wilderness hiking of our own. The verdict is in, and Metallica is literal cougar repellent.
Watch the video Dee Gallant recorded of her encounter with the cougar below.
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