Going 'cavewoman style': Woman recounts saving 7-year old boy from cougar

Alishea Morrison said she acted on pure instinct when she saved seven-year-old Cason Feuser from a cougar attack Sunday.

Cason and his two sisters were staying with Morrison at a campsite near Buster Creek, Alta., along with three other kids. The six had been trying to catch frogs near the river, Morrison said, when she heard one of the girls shout, “Cougar!”

She jumped out of her chair and ran down to see the cougar on top of the boy, its jaws clasped around his head.

“It was like a split second. I just grabbed a rock and hit the cougar in the head somehow – and didn’t hit Cason, thank god – and it dropped him.”

The cougar ran towards the camp before Morrison’s dog, Jersey, chased it away and into the woods. After the cougar was off, she said she knew she needed to stop the bleeding and call 911.

“Those three things just happened. I didn’t think about them, it just sort of happened,” she said. “I’m sure my training probably helped.”

Morrison, a registered nurse and nurse practitioner, took Cason into the trailer and wrapped his wounds in towels. Her niece helped apply pressure when Morrison had to move to reconnect to the cell phone network to call 911.

Paramedics arrived around 30 minutes later, taking Carson while they waited for STARS to arrive. Morrison called Cason’s mom, Chay Feuser, to let her know what happened. A few hours later, Morrison and the other kids left the campsite and headed home.

LOOKING BACK

Cason is doing well after surgery and out of the hospital, his mom said, and both her and Morrison are grateful the attack wasn’t worse. It’s something you worry about, she said, but you never think it will happen.

Morrison is an experienced outdoorswoman and said she was actually prepared for something like this. There was a gun in the trailer and a knife easily accessible at the campsite. Still, in the end, instinct saved Cason, she adds.

“I was as prepared as I think I could have been and, you know, having to go cavewoman-style with a rock was just what happened. The gun was useless to me in the trailer,” she said, adding the cougar was on Cason for just eight to ten seconds.

“That’s all it took. So if I had gone and grabbed a gun or a knife that would have been another 20 seconds. And I think about that.”

LOOKING FORWARD

The kids are doing remarkably well considering, said Morisson, but she worries the trauma of that day might have stripped her family of their love of the woods and feelings of safety outdoors.

She adds that an attack like this is rare, and she doesn’t want the story to scare people away from the outdoors and enjoying nature, but she advises having some first aid training and knowing where cell-service points are in the area in case of emergency.

There are no plans in the future for Morrison and her family to head back out to the backcountry any time soon, but she hopes they do someday.

“I have a lot of emotions. I think there’s a bit of guilt. I wish that there could have been something I could have done for it to never happen in the first place,” she said.

“I do hope with some therapy and counseling for the kids and myself, and Chay and their family, that we’ll be able to love the woods again maybe sometime down the road.”