Look up the word ‘viral’ in the dictionary, and you just may see the name Kyle Burgess as part of the definition. Burgess is a 26-year-old man from Orem, Utah, who went on a run in the mountains only to be followed by a mountain lion for approximately six minutes. And he captured it all on video. Since posting it on October 12, 2020, on YouTube, it received more than 3 million views.
“Sorry, not sorry for the language,” Burgess posed on his Instagram page. “I thought I was done for!”
Burgess first came across a couple of cubs followed what looked like their mother. He told the Deseret News that each time he tried to bend over to grab a stick or a rock for defense, the animal hissed, snarled and lunged at him multiple times.
“Come on, dude. I don’t feel like dying today,” he said on the video.
Wildlife officials say the main reason Burgess ended up walking off the mountain unscathed is because of how he handled the situation. He slowly talked backwards the entire time in order to keep himself looking larger than the mountain lion.
One not so ironic side note, the incident took place in the mountains immediately above Provo, Utah, home of Brigham Young University, whose mascot is a cougar.
(Video source: Kyle Burgess)