Do you dare to take a photo with the big cat?
A tourist faced a shocking accident when she was visiting a Safari park in Ukraine and taking pictures with a zoo lion. The big cat turned mad and dragged her on the ground, leading her seriously injured.
It's unknown if she can get her arm full recovery and she is asking the park for around US$1,538 as a compensation, but the refused her demand.
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Olga Solomina, 46, participated in the event of "Being with lions" hold by the park since she was attracted by the famous footage of Oleg Zubkov, the director of the safari park, using slippers to tame a lion.
She said she was told to kneel down and touch the lion's mane for photographs. But the next moment, the lion she was touching suddenly pounced on her arm and dragged her "like a rag doll" on the floor. What's more terrible was other lions started to move their feet.
She was so scared to close her eyes and felt she would be torn apart by the animals. "It lasted several seconds that felt like eternity for me.", Olga said.
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Oleg was nearby at that time. He immediately drove the lions and took her away. The tourist was seriously injured but she claimed she was treated only with a towel wrapping on her arm by the park's staff.
"He (Oleg) asked me not to call the police or an ambulance, saying that my injuries were not severe", the victim recalled.
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A staff member treated Olga's lacerations with hydrogen peroxide for disinfection. Then a vet injected her with lidocaine and stitched the wound. "Instead of anesthetizing me they gave me a bottle of cognac. They did not give me any antibiotics.", she said.
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Over the next 24 hours, her temperature escalated. She finally called an ambulance when she was in incredible pain. Doctors diagnosed she was seriously infected and had to undergo surgery.
"The infection got into her body from the teeth of the animal. It is a very dangerous infection. She underwent surgery. Her health condition became better, but she needs further treatment. At the moment it's still not clear if she will regain full usage of her arm," doctor Nikolai Vlasov said.
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Oleg later said Olga was drunk when she tried to touch the lion's mane. "Obviously, the young lion did not like the smell of alcohol that came from Olga," Oleg explained.
The safari park refused to give 1,000,000-ruble (around US$1,500) compensation, saying she signed a disclaimer accepting that the excursion was dangerous.
Police are investigating the case.
A solo hiker who authorities believe was killed by a mountain lion on a remote Colorado trail on New Year's Day was not the first person to encounter one of the predators in the area in recent weeks.
Gary Messina said he was running along the same trail on a dark November morning when his headlamp caught the gleam of two eyes in the nearby brush. Messina used his phone to snap a quick photo before a mountain lion rushed him.
Messina said he threw the phone at the animal, kicked dirt and yelled as the lion kept trying to circle behind him. After a couple of harrowing minutes he broke a bat-sized stick off a downed log, hit the lion in the head with it and it ran off, he said.
The woman whose body was found Thursday on the same Crosier Mountain trail had “wounds consistent with a mountain lion attack,” said Kara Van Hoose with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. An autopsy is scheduled for next week, said Rafael Moreno with the Larimer County Coroner's Office.
Wildlife officials late Thursday tracked down and killed two mountain lions in the area — one at the scene and another nearby. A necropsy will help determine if either or both of those animals attacked the woman and whether they had neurological diseases such as rabies or avian flu.
A search for a third mountain lion reported in the area was ongoing Friday, Van Hoose said. Nearby trails remained closed while the hunt continued. Van Hoose said circumstances would dictate whether that lion is also killed.
Based on the aggressiveness of the animal that attacked him on Nov. 11, Messina suspects it could be the same one that killed the woman on New Year’s Day.
“I had to fight it off because it was basically trying to maul me,” Messina told The Associated Press. “I was scared for my life and I wasn’t able to escape. I tried backing up and it would try to lunge at me.”
The 32-year-old man from nearby Glen Haven, Colorado, reported his encounter to wildlife officials days later who posted signs to warn people about the animal along trails in the Crosier Mountain area northeast of Estes Park, Van Hoose said. The signs were later removed, she said.
Mountain lion sightings in that area east of Rocky Mountain National Park are common, Van Hoose said, because it offers good habitat for the animals: It’s remote with thick forests, rocky outcroppings and lots of elevation changes.
Yet attacks on humans by the animals are rare, and the last suspected fatal encounter in Colorado was in 1999, when a 3-year-old boy disappeared in the wilderness and his tattered clothes were found more than three years later. In 1997, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a lion and dragged away while hiking with family members in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Two hikers on Thursday saw the victim's body on the trail at around noon from about 100 yards (meters) away, Van Hoose said. A mountain lion was nearby and they threw rocks to scare it away. One of the hikers, a physician, attended to the victim but did not find a pulse, Van Hoose said.
The victim will be publicly identified following the autopsy by the coroner, who is also expected to provide a cause of death.
Mountain lions — also known as cougars, pumas or catamounts — can weigh 130 pounds (60 kilograms) and grow to more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) long. They primarily eat deer.
Colorado has an estimated 3,800 to 4,400 of the animals, which are classified as a big game species in the state and can be hunted.
Thursday's killing would be the fourth fatal mountain lion attack in North America over the past decade, and the 30th since 1868, according to information from the California-based Mountain Lion Foundation. Not all of those deaths have been confirmed as mountain lion attacks.
Most attacks occur during the day and when humans are active in lion territories, indicating the animals are not seeking out the victims, according to the advocacy group. About 15% of attacks are fatal.
“As more people live, work, and recreate in areas that overlap wildlife habitat, interactions can increase, not because mountain lions are becoming more aggressive, but because overlap is growing,” said Byron Weckworth, chief conservation officer for the foundation.
To reduce the risk travel in groups, keep children close and avoid dawn and dusk when lions are most active, Weckworth said. During an encounter, maintain eye contact with the lion, make yourself appear larger and back away slowly; don't run, he said.
Last year in Northern California, two brothers were stalked and attacked by a lion that they tried to fight off. One of the brothers was killed.
FILE - The General Store is seen Oct. 24, 2006, in Glen Haven, Colo. (AP Photo/The Denver Post, Karl Gehring, File)
