Diversion: The cougar had 'his fangs in me'
B.C. man slit cat's throat: David Parker still lives with the damage -- and the anger
Ian Bailey
National Post
Monday, October 21, 2002
Jumped by a cougar on Vancouver Island last August, David Parker managed to reach his pocket knife and...
Mark Allan, North Island Gazette
...slit the cat's throat. Port Hardy conservation officer Greg Kruger inspects the wound.
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VANCOUVER - David Parker's frustration over his slow recovery from a cougar attack is eased these days by satisfaction that he stabbed the 41-kilogram cat to death after it jumped him.
"I would say I had a hate-on for that cat," the retired mill worker says, recalling events in early August that riveted residents of a province that has seen eight fatal cougar attacks in the last century. Fifty-three were not fatal.
"I was desperate to survive and determined to get that cat."
In an exclusive interview with the National Post -- his first comments to the media since the stunning attack -- the 62-year-old man said he is angry.
"I focus it on the cat and on cougars in general, right now," Mr. Parker said from his home in Port Alice, about 500 kilometres north of Victoria on Vancouver Island.
After being jumped while on an evening walk -- and bitten so severely that one eye socket was wrenched loose -- Mr. Parker used a pocket knife with a three-inch blade to kill the cat.
The father of two grown children spoke of fighting for his life with the howling cat, struggling to get an edge so he could end a torment that caused him the worst pain he has ever felt.
After he won, he left the cougar dead by the side of the road before walking a kilometre to get help from a logging operation where a worker rushed him to hospital.
Mr. Parker is not a hunter. He says he was acting on instinct.
"I wanted to kill [the cougar]. I wanted to do him some damage, at least, for what he had done to me."
Mr. Parker will be living with that damage for awhile. He figures he faces at least two years of surgery. "It could even go beyond that," he says.
"I am frustrated at my lack of progress. The healing process is going to be a long time."
At the time of the attack Mr. Parker's six-foot frame easily carried 170 pounds. He has since lost 25 pounds -- "all muscle." A routine one-kilometre round-trip walk to the post office that used to be a snap now leaves him exhausted. He is too tired to continue his former passions of playing old-timers hockey and curling, suggesting he has turned into a "couch potato."
He lists his injuries. One of his ears was torn loose in the attack. His right eye socket was ripped loose along with the tear ducts and sinuses in both eyes. The cat took a small bit out of his skull, removing a layer of bone. His right-ear canal swelled shut. If it does not naturally correct itself, that will mean surgery.
Mr. Parker faces operations to realign his right eye, which is patched shut, and repair the eyelid muscles of his left eye.
Some plates of metal and screws in his face that he compares to a "Mechanno set" may be removed; some will remain.
"It's going to be a long haul," he says.
Until Mr. Parker was attacked on Aug. 1, he said he had only seen a cougar once. That was in about 1981 when he, his wife and children saw a cougar run across a logging road near Port Alice.
Cougar sightings have recently become routine in the isolated forestry community of about 1,300 people. The last cougar attack before Mr. Parker's experience was in February, 2001. A mill worker used a lunch pail, bicycle and his fists to fight off a cat attacking another man.
Mr. Parker's nightmare began when he went out on a walk to work out leg cramps that developed while he was working on the roof of his house.
During the walk, it started to rain. Mr. Parker took shelter under a rock outcropping by the side of a logging road.
"That's when the cat managed to creep down beside me," recalls Mr. Parker. "He came up beside me. He came right along a ledge to my shoulder.
"I heard a very soft sound. It must have been his pads touching down. I happened to glance over. And there he was -- a foot from my shoulder."
Mr. Parker tried to flee. "It didn't work."
The cat jumped on his back. What came next remains blurred, but Mr. Parker ended up in a ditch about a half-metre deep by the side of the road. The cat was on top of him. The fall had broken his jaw, he believes.
The cat bit the right side of his face, breaking loose his cheekbone.
The next thing Mr. Parker remembers was a feeling of pain as the cougar bit off his scalp, which flapped loose and dropped in front of his eyes. "That was quite some pain," he said.
Then the cat took a bite out of Mr. Parker's skull.
Throughout, the cat was howling. "He was ferocious. He just kept coming at me."
Mr. Parker tried to go for his knife, which was in a pouch on his belt. Mr. Parker routinely carried the knife for protection from wildlife such as bears or "some mad dog or whatever" or to make himself a crutch if he got injured while on a walk.
When he went for it, the cougar bit him in the face.
Mr. Parker knew he needed his knife. The cat "had all his weapons out, his fangs and everything wrapped into me. I thought I had better get something going."
Mr. Parker said the pain was excruciating, especially when the cougar bit his face, loosening his eye socket.
"That was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. You could also hear it. You could hear the muscles and sinew and whatever else snapping and popping as he bit in," he said. "It was a horrific feeling."
Mr. Parker thought he was going to die.
"[The cougar] thought he had a meal right there. I thought he was right after that first attack, because I didn't think I was going to survive."
The cougar was on him, its paws on his shoulders. Mr. Parker reared back, and pushed with his feet pinning the cat on the road and creating friction as the unruly tangle of man and feline moved along the pavement.
At one point, Mr. Parker had the cougar in a scissors-grip. He tried twisting its forearm. He got the cat in a half nelson wrestling hold, but it twisted free.
Eventually, Mr. Parker gripped the cougar in a bear hug, figuring that was the only way to control it while he went for his knife.
While hugging the cat, Mr. Parker withdrew the knife and unfolded it. He stabbed out, accidentally stabbing himself in his shoulder.
Finally, Mr. Parker -- his vision clouded by blood and dirt -- thought he saw an opening at the cat's shoulder and neck.
He slashed out, sticking his knife into the animal. He ripped down as far as he could. "I think I hit his jugular because he didn't last too long after that."
Mr. Parker continued his embrace, then let go. The cat went limp. "Some muscles twitched. I grabbed back on to the cat again. [The muscles] rippled through the whole body."
Mr. Parker got up. "I didn't feel too good," he said.
He felt weak. So he lay down briefly. Then he got up. It was getting cold. He knew a logging operation was nearby. Before he left for the one-kilometre walk there, he threw his knife back at the cat.
He is not sure why.
When Mr. Parker reached the logging operation, a worker there rushed him to hospital. Eventually, Mr. Parker was flown by air ambulance to Victoria.
His first few days in intensive care were a blur due to drugs given him. He worried about losing his sight. "As I told my wife at the hospital, 'If I didn't at least have my eyes, I didn't care. They could pull the plug.' "
Eventually, he knew he would be OK. "Everyone was telling me I would have a good chance," he said.
He used to dream vividly and often about the attack. Those dreams have ended.
As he recovers, he says he has been aided by his family. "I have a patient wife [Helen] who happens to be a [registered nurse], which helps a lot."
Port Alice residents have also been terrific. Residents took care of his home while he was in hospital. A neighbour now takes care of his lawn. Another man offered to drive Mr. Parker to Victoria for medical appointments -- a seven-hour road trip.
"Just the other day, I got a new knife in the mail. It said, 'From your friends in Port Alice.' "
Recently, Mr. Parker spoke to the conservation officer who reviewed the situation. The man said, based on an autopsy of the cat, that it was a healthy three-to-four-year-old with fat that suggested it was in good shape. It had eaten 10 to 12 hours before the attack.
"I just wonder why it attacked me," says Mr. Parker.
ibailey@nationalpost.com
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