VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 30 (UPI) -- A Canadian emergency room nurse is being credited with saving her 4-year-old daughter's life this week after a cougar attacked the child.
Monique Bazille used a cooler holding four cans of beer to fight the big cat during the attack on Vancouver Island, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported.
On the first try, she hit the cougar on its shoulder, but it refused to release Hayley.
"It wasn't leaving," the mother told reporters. "It snarled and growled at me. It stood its ground. But I stood mine.
"I said: 'You get off of her.' And I was screaming and I went to kick him."
Eventually, the cougar, its mouth red with her daughter's blood, released the girl and went back into the bush.
Doctors said Bazille did everything right in the seconds after the attack. From fighting the cougar to expertly wrapping her daughter's mutilated scalp, she's credited with saving the child's life.
She said her daughter, being treated at a Vancouver hospital, is independent and angry. Said Bazille, "She says she'd like to take the kitty to the deep end of the pool and drown it."
