It turns out Metallica isn’t just for nostalgic ’80s dads, angsty teens and metalhead karaoke kings. It also makes a good cougar deterrent.
That’s what Vancouver Island resident Dee Gallant found out while walking her husky Murphy earlier this week outside Duncan, B.C. The pair encountered a cougar on a logging road.
In the video below, Gallant tries to verbally scare off the big cat — which was crouched about 50 metres away and seemed to be stalking them — to little success.
She says she tried to find the loudest song on her phone, and that turned out to be Metallica’s “Don’t Tread On Me.” Which, to be honest, is quite loud.
“I thought it was the noisiest thing on my phone that would probably scare it, that was also the message I wanted to convey to the cougar,” Gallant told Okanagan news website Kelowna Now.
Listen for yourself and imagine being a cougar out minding your own business when some lady starts blasting this at you.
I’d run away too.
Apparently the cougar in question did just that and turned trail pretty quick, leaving Gallant and Murphy to continue their walk. Gallant told Kelowna Now that she’ll never leave home without a roster of trusty Metallica songs again.
“I would love to contact them someday and tell James Hetfield that he saved my life,” she said.
This isn’t the first time music has been proven to be a suitable animal deterrent. Earlier this year, a study showed that playing a specific song by dubstep artist Skrillex could ward of mosquitoes.
Based on that study and Gallant’s experience, next time I encounter a gnarly raccoon in my back alley, I’m going to try blasting some Blink-182 and see what happens.
(Though to be honest the raccoon will probably just try to steal my phone.)
WATCH: Cougar gets saved from a tree in British Columbia.