Chemainus resident Denise Gallant’s story of blasting Metallica’s 1991 hit Don’t Tread on Me from her mobile phone to stave off a cougar attack in the bush continues to attract media attention from around the globe.
“For today, this is interview No. 15,” said Gallant, who wrote about her strange cougar encounter on July 23 on her Facebook page. The story has taken off in print and radio and TV, including in Canada, Russia, Costa Rica, Italy, Spain, Germany and the U.S.
Her Facebook post, in which she thanked Metallica for saving her life, prompted the American heavy-metal band’s frontman, James Hetfield, to phone from California.
Gallant, 45, said she was walking her eight-year-old husky-retriever, Murphy, on July 23 on a logging road south of Duncan when a cougar appeared about 50 feet ahead.
A forestry worker who has worked in logging in the past, Gallant is not unaccustomed to seeing wildlife. “I’m more comfortable out there than in a herd of people, that’s for sure.”
She frequently walks her dog along logging backroads in the area and so was cautious, but not scared when she saw the big cat after leaving on her stroll sometime between 6:30 and 7 p.m.
“I was a couple of kilometres in when I felt like something was watching me and I looked over and there he was coming toward me,” said Gallant. “He was prowling me, doing that stalking-me kind of prowl. He was just coming at me so I pulled my dog in beside me, because he was on a long leash, and said ‘hey you, stop’ and he actually froze and was just looking at me, kind of crouched down.”
“It was pretty intimidating, but at that point I wasn’t scared,” said Gallant.
She made herself big and began recording the encounter on her phone, fully expecting the cougar to be gone in a flash: “I see you kitty cat. … Get out of here. Go on. Get! Bad Kitty. Bad Kitty. Go. You little bastard. Get out of here. Go on. I’ll fight you. Go on.”
She didn’t want to involve her 115-pound dog Murphy, oblivious to it all, not knowing where that would lead.
Realizing her yelling was not effective and if she bent down to pick up a rock she would appear small and maybe look like prey, Gallant quickly flipped through her iTunes music collection — while keeping her iPhone raised in the air — to blast out what she believed would be the perfect hard-rock repellent: Don’t Tread On Me.
The aggressive pounding start of the song was enough to chase off the cougar.
A fan of the Metallica since she was 14, it was the first song that came to her. While Gallant was chatty with the cougar she was “lost for words” when days later she received a call from Hetfield.
They talked dogs and Vancouver Island and cougars after she got over her initial shyness and doubt that it was really him calling.
Undaunted by it all, Gallant was out on another stroll out in the woods on Tuesday night.
“You can’t live your life in fear. Yes, I go out in the bush alone with my dog, but I don’t take chances and I usually have bear spray and a knife and that kind of stuff, but in this situation, it wouldn’t have done me any good.”
The cougar was too far for bear spray and she didn’t think a knife would be needed, but she was armed with heavy metal and that seemed to do the trick.
