The Canadian woman who used METALLICA's music to scare off a cougar while walking her dog got to thank James Hetfield for saving her life. According to CTV News, Dee Gallant got a call from a band liaison before the weekend who told her to expect a call from the group shortly. As it turned out, the METALLICA frontman was the voice on the other end of the line. "I was a little bit lost for words," Gallant told CTV News on Monday (August 5). "It's surreal how quickly it happened and how far it's gone. The fact that he's so down to earth and such a great person, I'm very pleased to find that out first-hand. "If you had told the 18-year-old me that this would happen, I never would've believed it," she added. "I would've just fallen out of my skin with excitement." Shortly after the phone call ended, Hetfield sent her a selfie with the "rock on" symbol and a message that said: "Thought you might like some confirmation that it was me." Gallant and her husky Murphy made headlines last month after they were out for their usual evening stroll on a logging road just outside of Duncan, British Columbia when she said she felt "like something was watching" them. "I looked over to the right and there it was," she recalled to KelownaNow. "I couldn't make it out at first and thought, 'Oh, that is a strange color. That's not a tree.'" After realizing what it was, Gallant "stopped and looked at him and he didn't stop," she told Victoria News. "I looked at him and said, 'Hey, you, stop it,' and he stopped. That's when I started filming." Gallant can be heard on the video yelling out instructions to make the cougar go away: "Get out of here," "Bad kitty," and "I'll fight you." "It didn't respond to that either," Gallant said. "It just stayed locked on to me and seemed really interested, so that is when I decided to stop recording and try to do something else… I quickly rifled through my iTunes and found METALLICA 'Don't Tread On Me'," she explained. "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... As soon as it started to play, he buggered off into the bush. "I guess he didn't want to eat anything that leaves a METALLICA taste in his mouth," Gallant joked. Gallant credited METALLICA's music with sparing her a possibly unpleasant encounter with the big cat.
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