Viral Video Appears to Show Man Throwing Bobcat After it Attacks His Wife

A viral video appears to show a man throwing a bobcat after the animal attacks his wife.

When the video begins, the man says "Good morning" to a woman jogging on his street. The man then says, "I need to wash my car," as he puts down his portable coffee cup and pulls out a fob to unlock his vehicle.

As he opens a rear passenger door, his wife appears in the lower-left frame. Then, a wildcat yowls and she pauses to see. "Run! Run!" she screams as the bobcat appears to grab her backside.

The man then runs to his wife's aid. He grabs the bobcat and holds it in his outstretched arms. His wife, frightened, runs back into the house.

Hearing the screaming, the female jogger runs back towards the neighbors. The man announces, "A bobcat!" and then tosses the animal away from himself. It lands in the nearby lawn, approximately 10 feet away.

"Get out! Get out! Get out!" The man repeatedly yells at the bobcat as the jogger runs towards the animal, repeatedly commanding it to "Go! Go!"

The bobcat then runs off the way it came, dashing beneath the man's vehicle as he chases after it. "I'll shoot that f*cker!" he exclaims.

"Watch out!" the man yells to an unseen neighbor off-camera. "It's a bobcat that attacked my wife!"

"A bobcat?" the woman asks. "A bobcat!" he yells back.

As of Thursday, 11:56 p.m., the video has gained over 2.6 million views, 116,600 likes and 29,800 retweets on Twitter.

Though bobcats tend to avoid people, sick or rabid ones are known to attack. Animal experts advise people to back away slowly, neither turning their back to the animals nor running. Running or showing your back could trigger the wildcat's instinct to pounce.

Loud noises can also scare off the animals. But experts suggest that people who see a bobcat in their neighborhood should contact animal control authorities. The authorities can capture the creatures, treat them if they're sick or injured and release them back into the wild.

Another video of an attempted wildcat attack went viral in October 2020. It involved a jogging enthusiast named Kyle Burgess was stalked for six minutes by a cougar while running in Provo, Utah.

On his run, Burgess saw four young cougar kittens scampering on the trail. He began recording them until their full-grown mother emerged from the woods.

The mother, protective of her kittens, began to trail Burgess. He began recording as she tracked closely behind him, occasionally lunging at him: bearing her claws, showing her fangs, her ears pulled back and hind legs kicking up dust.

He told The Deseret News that he knew it would be unwise to turn his back on an animal predator, lest it mistake him for fearful prey and pounce. To scare her away, he tried growling, hissing, screaming and swearing. But every time he bent down to grab a rock to throw at her, she lunged forward.

After being trailed for nearly six minutes, Burgess was eventually able to grab a rock and throw it at the cougar, hitting it. The animal scampered off and Burgess ended the ordeal without so much as a scratch.

Newsweek contacted the Wildcat Wildlife Center for comment.