United States: A 9-year-old girl is recovering at a health care centre in Washington state after being attacked by a cougar while she was playing hide-and-seek outdoor with her friends, as per the Washington Department of Fish and Wildfire.
Lily Kryzhanivskyy was attacked on Saturday as she jumped out to surprise her friends, the department mentioned in the statement. The young ones had been attending a camp near Fruitland in northeastern Washington, around 70 miles from Spokane.
Moreover, the 9-year-old was taken to the local hospital for the treatment, where she is out of the ICU as well as making an “amazing” recovery, her mother mentioned in the statement.
The cougar is a huge cat native to the Americas, and they never attack humans. But here are possible reasons this one did.
The wildlife department’s Capt. Mike Sprecher stated, “We are extremely thankful for this little girl’s resiliency, & we are impressed with her courage in the face of this encounter. It happened fast, & we are thankful that the adults at the camp responded so quickly.”
Lily “wants individuals to know she was ‘very brave & tough in the face of the attack,” the statement emphasised.
Along with this, the young make cougar that attacked Lily has been killed, the statement highlighted, & tests indicate that the animal did not have rabies.
Attacks of Cougar are rare, with only two fatal attacks having taken place in the state, as to the wildfire department.
In 2018, a cougar looked at two mountain bikers in the state’s Cascade Mountains, killing one. Prior to the latest incident, nineteen attacks have been resulted in injuries to humans in the previous 100 years, according to the department.
In addition, Sprecher outlined, “Wild animals don’t care to be around humans any more than we want to have close encounters with them.”