A starving cougar that walked into the home of a [Trail, B.C.] woman and attacked her while she sat in her living room is now dead.

"The woman was in her house with a number of puppies when the cougar walked in through an open door and attacked her on the sofa," Trail RCMP Sgt. Rob Hawton said of the weekend incident.

With the help of her dog, the woman fought the cougar off and chased it out of the house. She received a couple of minor injuries to her upper leg from the cougar's claws.

The cougar was gone by the time police arrived.

But the animal was tracked down and destroyed Monday.

Hawton said the cougar was gone before officers arrived and a subsequent search was not successful. B.C. Conservation officers were called in and the cougar was tracked and destroyed.

"This is an extremely rare occurrence and was driven by the animal's desperation for food," Hawton said.

The cougar is believed to have been too weak from starvation to hunt normally. Earlier this month, the president of the Trail Wildlife Association, Terry Hanik, raised the alarm of a rise in predators in the region.

Hanik said cougars and wolves were pushing into the area, adding their numbers to the huge number of coyotes already plaguing the back country and eroding the deer population, forcing predators to look into more settled areas where deer have been thriving for years.

A Seattle woman was attacked and dragged 20 feet by a grizzly bear while working for a Canadian mining company in Alaska - but survived with minor only injuries.

Julia Stafford, 20, a University of British Columbia student, smartly played dead after the bear knocked her - and a male colleague - over and on to the ground.


'It bit my hand and kind of dragged me 20 feet over the rocks and just left me,' Stafford told The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner from her hospital bed while ironically holding - you guessed it - a teddy bear.

'I was worried I was going to die briefly, but it was fine once she let me go and ran away...It happened really quick.'


The hair-raising encounter reportedly occurred about 1:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon - just two days after another grizzly bear ate a hiker in Denali National Park and Preserve.


Dangerous Encounter: Stafford was reportedly dragged some 20 feet by the beast after it knocked her over - and then just as suddenly meandered away

It happened when Stafford and Kerry - his last name was not available - were collecting rock samples in the rain near a foggy ravine for Pure Nickel Inc., a Canadian company.

'The bear sort of walked out of the fog and it had two cubs with it,' Stafford told the News-Miner.

'We started walking uphill to get away from it and it started walking toward us.

'We stopped once we saw it was following us and tried to get the bear spray out but by then it was already running toward us.
Striking Twice: The attack on Stafford and her colleague came only two days after hiker Richard White of San Diego was eaten by a bear in Denali National Park and Preserve

Striking Twice: The attack on Stafford and her colleague came only two days after hiker Richard White of San Diego was eaten by a bear in Denali National Park and Preserve

'I was wearing gloves and they were wet and it was confusing,' she reportedly added. 'There was just not enough time to get the bear spray out.'