Just learn jujitsu....
May 26, 1996
PORT ANGELES - Of all the humans the cougar could have attacked Friday, it had the rotten luck to tangle with Phil Anderson, dog wrestler, jujitsu fan.
"I went to my back, wrapped my legs around him, rolled over and mounted him and started choking him, choking him forever," Anderson said Saturday. "It was just nuts."
Anderson, 28, a Port Angeles mountain bike enthusiast, spent Saturday on the couch, healing from the cougar attack in Olympic National Park.
He had been riding his mountain bike on the Wolf Creek Trail Friday afternoon.... (edit)
When the cat came at him, he started running backwards, he said. He figured the cougar weighed about 80 pounds. The cougar kept coming, then leapt at Anderson's chest. Anderson fell to his back, locked his legs around the cougar, flipped over and buried his thumbs in the animal's throat. He kept the front paws pinned back with his forearms, he said. He had the cat pretty much subdued, but it wouldn't die. "I was watching him go in and out," Anderson said. "We were at a stalemate." To his surprise, the cat made no noise while it struggled, Anderson said. He, however, was shouting for help.After about two and a half or three minutes, the cat still wriggling, Anderson got his thumb in the cougar's mouth. He just smashed it," Anderson said.
That gave the cat the edge. As Anderson lost his grip, that cat's claws went into a whirl, ripping at the thick, baggy sweatshirt. Some of the claws caught Anderson's chest. "He put a lot more holes in my sweatshirt than he did in me," Anderson said.
Not wanting any more, the combatants exploded away from each other and ran. Anderson ran down the trail, grabbed a baseball bat in his van and returned for his bike. The cat had stuck around, still looking for food. "He carried off my bag with four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in it," Anderson said. It was the end of Anderson's first cougar sighting.
... (edit)
And he has some other skills that prepared him for cougar fighting, he said. "I've been doing this jujitsu dog thing." While unemployed last winter, he spent a lot of time wrestling with a 120-pound German Shepherd named Forest, who was named for the trees.
Forest, who loves to wrestle, has been getting a taste of jujitsu, too. Anderson employs a move he picked up from "ultimate fighting," a new anything-goes sport in which people fight without gloves. ...(edit)
"Hopefully, he may have turned the cougar off from hunting humans," he said. Gissell said he looked over the fight scene and found cougar tracks and signs of a struggle.
He also learned, through Anderson's admission, that Anderson was riding on a trail where bikes are forbidden.The fine is $50. However, Gissel let the injured wrestler off the hook. "The cougar was his warning," he said.
of course, the probable story is that this dude just augered in his mountain bike and needed a good story....
