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Gallant told Kelowna Now that she was about two kilometres deep into the trail when she saw something unusual in the distance. She wasn’t initially alarmed when she saw the cougar about 50 feet away from her, but that changed when Gallant noticed it was slowly approaching her. “It was crouched down, doing that kind of prowl, predator walk that they do.”

In a video, Gallant yelled at the cougar to stop, which it did. But the cougar continued to stare her down. “Get of of here,” she said. “Bad kitty.”

'Get of of here,' she said. 'Bad kitty'

According to Kelowna Now, she then took out her phone and began to look through her music library for something that would appear “most human and most threatening.” She Metallica’strack “Don’t Tread on Me”.

Gallant said the cougar was startled and ran off into the bush, out of sight. She then began to carefully make her way back with Murphy, continuing to make noise to avert the cougar, now processing just how big it really was.

She said she wouldn’t have made it out of there without the help of the band. “I would love to contact them someday and tell James Hetfield that he saved my life,” she said.