Toddler's brush with cougar puts B.C. community on edge

Residents in Squamish, B.C., are on high alert after a three-year-old girl was attacked by a cougar Tuesday evening.

Maya Espinosa was picking berries in Fisherman's Park near the Squamish River when the cougar pounced.

Her mother, Maureen Lee, jumped in and fought the cougar off, leaving Maya with minor scratches.

The incident has local resident Patricia Henshaw on edge.

She loves taking her grandchildren for long walks on local trails, but on Thursday, just days after the attack, she brought the kids to a playground in town instead.

"The park where the little girl was attacked is just around the corner from where we live in Brackendale, which is why I have brought them down to this park today for a little bit of a change, but it is pretty scary with little children and dogs," she said.

Henshaw said she doesn't know if she will ever feel completely safe in the woods again.

"Well, I have never heard about this before. It was always bears we spoke about before, never cougars," she said.

Conservation officer Chris Doyle said cougar attacks are very rare but not unheard of.

There have been 32 cougar sightings in the area, 60 kilometres north of Vancouver, in the past 11 days, including two Wednesday night.

"We believe there are two other cougars around the town site right now. We will wait for the calls and see if there are encounters we need to respond to," Doyle said.

A few houses from where the attack occurred, preschool operator Bobby-Jo Bergstrom said she isn't taking any chances.  

"It's very normal for us to walk over to Fisherman's Park with the children through the trails and over the little bridge," she said.

"We decided for right now, we are not going to go over to that side of the area with the children."

The attack was big news even among the kids.

"We talked about it with them. Some of them were scared, some of them said they heard a cougar attacked a little girl, and we talked about what they were feeling, but mostly we talked to them about what to do if they saw a cougar," Bergstrom said.