When a man in Ontario came across two lynx staring each other down and shrieking at one another on a rural road, he and his girlfriend took out their phones and recorded the encounter to post on Facebook.
The attention it’s received has left him “overwhelmed.”
While Edward Trist, his girlfriend Nicole Lewis and his daughter were heading down a logging road to go fishing near Avery Lake, Ont., east of Kenora, on Friday, they came across the rare sight about nine metres from where they stopped.
Trist said in an interview with Global News that they were heading off to go fishing.
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“We started off down this road and there were two lynx on the road and as we approached, they didn’t move which was really odd,” he said. “We got out and started filming it … what we caught on camera is very, very rare to catch.”
The two cats wail at each other throughout most of the video, and from time to time appear to almost headbutt each other. About halfway through the filming, one of the cats even goes to swipe at the other.
“I think the most bizarre thing of it is the audio, the sounds they made,” Trist said. “I’ve heard similar sounds, but just the action of the headbutting … it just really caught me off guard.
“To watch them try to intimidate each other is really amazing.”
Lynxes do make their homes in parts of Ontario, according to the Canadian Wildlife Federation, and often inhabit forested wilderness areas.
The animals have been heard before, Trist said, as he’s lived off the grid in the area for the past three years when he built a house and has had a cabin for about 20 years as well. But he’s rarely seen the animal, which is why when the two felines didn’t move when he pulled up to the scene, he found it odd.
He did, however, find the whole scene “comical.”
“People were saying online, ‘well it sounded like it was dubbed,’ but that’s what they actually sound like,” Trist said. “It’s almost comical if you watch it. It sounds like a couple kids narrating in the background but it was all live and we caught it.”
Both Trist and Lewis’ videos, each on Facebook, have now been seen a total of more than 10 million times as of Monday night.
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The response has been a surprise, with Trist receiving calls from Australia, Germany and other countries all over the world. He said he’s even received calls from places that have lynx but they’ve “never seen that before.”
“I’m really realizing how rare of a shot I got,” he said.
After spending about 10 minutes watching the two lynx, Trist said they had to leave as they were having friends over, but even after they got back in their vehicle and passed them to head home, the cats continued what they were doing.