Brief by Allen Best
Wildlife – February 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Crawling under a rural cabin to look at some frozen pipes, plumber Josh Pierce decided he wasn’t getting paid nearly enough. After crawling about 20 feet into a two-foot high space, with not even a wrench in his hand, he encountered what he quickly realized was a young mountain lion.
“After it hissed and spit at me, I realized I was looking into the eyes of a lion not more than five feet away,” he told the Crested Butte News.
The News notes that when facing mountain lions, the rule of thumb is to make yourself look large. “Unfortunately, since Pierce was on his stomach, he didn’t have that luxury,” the newspaper explained dryly.
The lion was in pounce mode, its fangs bared. So Pierce did what seemed like the only thing possible: He backed away, as best he could. It was good enough for the big cat.
Afterwards, the cat was rousted out of his wintertime refuge in the crawl space and killed.
