Sixty-nine-year-old Robert Biggs set out this week on a usual hike in Northern California when he stopped to observe a mother bear and her cub sitting near a stream bank. Next thing he knew, there was a mountain lion latched onto the backpack he was wearing. Biggs tried to fight off the lion with a rock pick when the bear grabbed the lion by the neck. The animals locked up briefly before the lion ran away. “I think the lion was stalking the bear’s cub and I got in the way,” said Biggs, who sustained puncture wounds from the lion. “The bear walked calmly back to her cub after, and I wrapped my arm up with a T-shirt and went gold panning before I went home.” It takes a lot more than a three-way mammalian wrestling match to throw Robert Biggs off his itinerary. The only animal missing was a tiger.
