A Langford, B.C., resident captured dramatic video of a cougar encounter near her home Thursday night on Bear Mountain.
Harmonie Spalding and her friend had just returned home from a movie when they parked their car to enjoy the view of the Victoria area from the mountain.
Then they spotted the big cat calmly walking toward them.
"We weren't sure if it could see us," Spalding told CTV News on Friday. "[We] stayed silent and still not to scare it."
"We got scared," said her friend Ekaterina Chuvashova. "I don't think it saw us. It looked so comfortable. It owned this mountain."
The two friends are "big cat people" and always wanted to have a cougar encounter, Spalding said.
"But not on foot. This was the perfect scenario."
The friends called the B.C. Conservation Officer Service to notify the agency of the encounter.
After Spalding posted the video to her Instagram account she said she woke up to a flurry of messages from people amazed by the closeup video of the large predator.
"[It was] definitely alarming because it's pretty much in my backyard. I've never seen a bear or a cougar walking around there," she said.
"I thought it was a baby initially, but as it got closer, nope."
