You just never know these days when something is going to happen in your life that brings unprecedented attention.
Such is the case for Chemainus’ Dee Gallant, whose story has gone way beyond viral about encountering a cougar and scaring it away with the Metallica song ‘Don’t Tread On Me.’
News organizations, web sites, TV and radio stations and anyone with the ways and means for telling this tale somewhere on the internet have inundated Gallant with calls for interviews. If you do a Goggle search, you’ll already find pages and pages of listings.
It’s on Global News, USA Today, even Billboard magazine, and, of course, the Chemainus Valley Courier.
Once the story started to gain traction, everybody had to get in on the act.
Gallant, herself, admits it’s been crazy. She can probably provide all the details in her sleep by now.
As expected, Metallica eventually got wind of this and Metallica frontman James Hetfield and we now foresee appearances on the Ellen DeGeneres show and maybe a cameo on Entertainment Tonight and other entertainment programs. The sky’s really the limit at this point.
It all started from a simple social media post by Gallant after a stalemate with a cougar while walking her dog south of Duncan. She did all the right hings, waved her arms, called out to the cougar to try and scare it off but nothing worked.
As the big cat crept toward her, she had to act fast. Pulling out her phone and cranking up the Metallica tune did the trick and sent the cougar scurrying. We’re not sure what that says about Metallica’s music - good, bad or otherwise - but it’s now a secret weapon when all else seems lost in wildlife encounters.
And perhaps if there is a message to come from all of this, it’s exactly that. Have some music handy with you when you’re walking in wilderness areas and hit the volume hard if you need to use it.
This could become a new survival technique after all else fails. Maybe just go to it first and see what happens.
We hope if that’s the case maybe Gallant can profit from being the pioneer of what seemed like an unorthodox response at the time, but the use of the heavy metal artillery worked so you can’t question that.