This is not the cougar that attacked Amber and Teri but Amber says the picture seems to capture the mood their cougar was in when it attacked.
When Teri Fostvedt and Amber Neely went out for a trail run recently they had no idea they’d end up saving each other’s life as they went face-to-face with a cougar who punctured Amber’s leg with a swipe of its claws and wouldn’t leave until a “divinely inspired” rock throw changed the mountain lion’s mind.
Teri and Amber are both nurses who work in the OR at Intermountain Medical Center. They often go running together and recently were running on a popular trail in Millcreek Canyon near Salt Lake City. Amber says she was running a little ahead of Teri when she noticed a mountain lion coming down the mountain side.
“It was a beautiful cat with green eyes,” she says. “It came down the path as I was coming around the corner. I slammed on the brakes immediately and it continued coming down the mountain side. I started to back up; I put up my hands and tried to be really big, and I screamed because it startled me. Then I just started making noise because I know that’s what you’re supposed to do: make yourself big and make lots of noise so it will go away.”
Apparently, this cougar hadn’t read the rule book because Amber says it strode right up to her.
“I stepped off the trail on accident, and I fell, and the cat came at me as I was falling and that’s when it made contact with me, leaving two wounds on my thigh,” Amber says.
Teri heard her friend scream and arrived seconds later.
“I saw Amber on the ground and there was blood all over her leg,” she says. “Everything happens so quickly and you’re making decisions in milliseconds and I was really just reacting.”
The decision Teri made in milliseconds wasn’t to run, but was to stand between the angry cougar and Amber. Suddenly the cougar, who was only about a foot away, was facing down a focused nurse who was making herself big and blocking its path to Amber. Teri wasn’t leaving her friend.
“When I saw Teri there I was immediately relieved because I just knew we were going to now work together,” Amber says. “I wasn’t alone anymore.”
“It kind of looked at me and Amber and I thought it was going to spring on Amber and Amber was in such a vulnerable position being on the ground,” Teri says. “I just did the same thing as Amber and made myself as big as possible and started screaming and trying to scare it. It was growling and hissing at me and kept its stance and I was doing the same thing back at it.”
Teri didn’t know how bad Amber was hurt and Amber says she didn’t know how bad she was hurt either because she jumped to her feet and suddenly the cougar was facing two loud scary nurses.
“While we were backing down the canyon and while the cat was focused on Teri, I took an opportunity to look for a rock,” Amber says.
She’s seen a video online where a guy had thrown rocks at a cougar that was after him. She found a rock about the size of a small Melon.
“So, I bent down and grabbed it and while Teri was making her arms big I threw over her left shoulder, throwing it overhead, like they do in soccer, and, as the cougar was staring at us, the rock hit the cat right in the face,” Amber says.
“It was the perfect divinely inspired throw,” Teri says.
“It kind of looked like it had stars in his eyes for a second and then it took off to the right, down the slope,” Amber says.
Amber lost her shoe in the surprise confrontation, but they weren’t about to go back to get it and risk another face off. Eventually, when they were away from the cougar, they broke into a run down the trail.
“I had a rock in each hand and one shoe on and we were blowing down the trail trying to get back to the trailhead,” Amber says.
She says she was on pure adrenaline for about a mile. They met up with some other runners who stayed with them and eventually a group of people were with them. Someone called 911 and the fire department met them at the trailhead and cleaned up Amber’s wounds. Then she was taken to an InstaCare. She says the cougar snagged her with its sharp claws as she was falling back. One wound was a deep puncture to her thigh and the other just a scratch.
“It didn’t hurt until after I was able to sit down and kind of process what happened because I think I was running on pure adrenaline,” Amber says. “Honestly, what hurt more was my foot because I was running on the trail with only one shoe.”
The Department of Wildlife Services was able to find her shoe and use it to track down the cougar and put it down. Amber and Teri say they felt very sad the mountain lion had to be killed.
“We understand they (the DWR) were in a tough spot because if they didn’t go up and find the cat and then it attacked someone else, people would be like, ‘You knew there was a cat up there and that it had attacked a couple of runners. Why wasn’t anything done?’” Amber says.
Amber says until you’re in a life-threatening situation you don’t know how you’ll react.
“It was a terrifying experience,” Amber says. “I just wanted to do anything I could to get out of there and get back to my kids.”
Amber says she’s never going to go out trail running alone.
“I think the biggest reason we both ended up walking away from this is because we were together,” Amber says. “And we had a mindset that we weren’t leaving each other and we were going to help each other get out of the situation. But there were a few seconds there when I didn’t know how this was going to end. I really didn’t. I’m so grateful for Teri and her bravery.”
They both believe there was some divine intervention that prevented the attack from being worse than it was. And Teri and Amber say that their training on how to deal with emergency situations also helped them that day on the trail. They tapped that mindset they have developed at work in emergency situations when facing down the snarling cougar, Teri says.
“You have to stay on task and stay focused and we do that at work,” Teri says. “At the hospital we work together and we’re a team, and I think that training helped us know how to process the danger we faced.”
Teri says she compares the whole experience to what patients go through when they get a frightening diagnosis and are suddenly dealing with a threat.
“They probably feel like they’re facing a mountain lion but when you have a team and you trust your team, like I trust Amber, then we just work together,” Teri says. “I know Amber always knows what to do. We had our roles and we stuck together. We were glued together. I think when you’re a patient and you get a frightening diagnosis, it’s a similar thing. You need a team who’s going to work with you and be there for you and a team that has your back. I feel like, as nurses, we want to be that for our patients.”