No Devotion/Ex-Lostprophets Keyboardist Recalls His Recent Encounter With A Mountain Lion

Keyboardist Richard “Jamie” Oliver of No Devotion/ex-Lostprophets fame, has recounted his recent encounter with a mountain lion while hiking in California:

*this photo is not my own “I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat” I did, I did, only the one I saw was a pretty heafty sized mountain Lion. I’d like to start this by mentioning how many fortunate factors were in my favor to enable me to the escape and be writing this. The first was that I’d decided not to wear headphones. This one thing alone probably saved my life. Shortly after taking the previous misty trail photograph I ascended into the clouds where visibility was down to about 30ft. I was meditating counting my breath when I noticed a rustling sound over my left shoulder. I turned to look expecting to see a rabbit but out of the corner of my eye was a much larger mammal. I thought to myself “that’s a brave coyote”. As I fully turned around to view the creature I realized what it was. Jumping out of the thicket onto the trail about 25ft away the lion approached seeming disappointed I had heard it coming. It adopted a low profile as it moved toward me. Now the first thing that came to mind was “aww beautiful cat like the ones in the zoo” swiftly followed by a daunting realization of the danger I was in. I knew a little about what to do but couldn’t remember all. I faced the creature and got as big as I could. I put my hatebreed voice to work and stood my ground. It hesitated. This seemed to be working. I backed up slowly darting looks, scanning my surroundings for a weapon. The second fortunate factor was that the floor was littered with decent size sticks and hand sized rocks. As quickly as possible I dropped to grab a large stick and swung it around violently. The lion came at me as I bent down but halted again as I swung the stick. I snapped the end of the brittle stick which formed a sharp point, I felt enabled and a little more confident with a weapon. Made the mistake of trying for the offensive but the cat just echoed my movements. We kept a distance of about 30 feet and I decided to fight back with rocks. The third fortunate thing was that my adrenaline allowed for a good accurate throw, and most rocks came within inches of the cat. At first it seemed confused but each rock bought me a few feet……..

A photo posted by Richard J Oliver (@richardjoliver) on May 31, 2015 at 2:58pm PDT

No Devotion/Ex-Lostprophets Keyboardist Recalls His Recent Encounter With A Mountain Lion

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