Though not as terrifying as the runner stalked by a mountain lion in Utah last month, another runner in California encountered a cougar on the trail, and the scary standoff prompted him to copy what the Utah man did to scare it away.

Carlos Vasquez, as he does four times a week, was on a morning run in O’Neill Regional Park in Orange County last week when he saw what he thought was a coyote coming up the trail, as he often sees in the early morning hours.

“Since I was running and looking around, I didn’t bother to really take a good look at the supposed to be a coyote, and as the video shows, there is a large tree that blocked my sight,” Vasquez told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors. “So, I slowed down. Thank God I did.”

Vasquez, wearing a GoPro while running, suddenly realized it was a mountain lion and stopped in his tracks.

“I thought about that mountain lion encounter in Utah for couple of reasons,” Vasquez said. “I was running those Utah mountains a week before and it could have been me, so when I saw the video, I asked myself what would I have done if it was me. Because he was so close, I thought that if he would have launched an attack there was not enough space for him to stop; it was going to be all or nothing. I also remembered that this runner in Utah talked to the lion a lot and that seemed to have worked. I tried the same thing and it seemed to have worked as well.”

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On the video you can hear him say, “Hey little kitty, go away. Come on, get away.” Then the cougar sat down.
“When I saw him sitting, I thought that he was standing [his] ground and he wanted me to go away, and that is when I slowly started backing up…I remember stumbling a bit and he reacted to it, so I stopped and continued talking.”

Eventually, the mountain lion turned and walked away, much to Vasquez’s relief.

“I made sure he was not around anymore, and after calming down, perhaps a couple of minutes, I continued with my run, but then I told myself ‘Don’t press your luck Carlos,’ turn around and continue running a different trail.”

And so he did, and didn’t it again.

“It was scary due to the proximity and the fact that he stood his ground and didn’t back up and just sat down for a while,” Vasquez told For The Win Outdoors. “The picture is still clear in my head and I get chills when I think about it.”

Photos courtesy of California Department of Fish and Wildlife and ViralHog.

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