A five-year-old boy in California was viciously attacked by a mountain lion before his mother had to fight the animal off him, leaving him with facial lacerations, cuts and bruises. Jack Trexler (pictured), 5, of Half Moon, was attacked around 6:50 p.m. Tuesday outside his home. His mother, Susie Trexler, had to wrestle the animal away from her son, who was left with “battle wounds.”

“He is the bravest, most adventurous little guy I’ve ever met, and I’m not surprised that if there was a kid who could take on a mountain lion and win, it would be Jack,” his aunt Amy Wagner wrote on GoFundMe. , which raised more than $26,000 in one day. “Jack has a lot of lacerations, especially on his precious face, in addition to a fracture near one eye. He is covered in cuts, bruises and scratches, but his spirit remains intact.”

The family said the mountain lion – which didn’t bite Jack, only scratched – narrowly missed a nerve near his eye by a centimeter. Jack was walking ahead of his mother and grandparents on Tunitas Creek Road when a mountain lion pounced on him near the family’s Potrera Nuevo farm. The mountain lion had been drinking, and the family suspects it was spooked by Jack, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Susie lashed out at the animal after it began attacking her child. As she approached, the animal released Jack. Susie immediately scooped the baby up and “ran down the slope” to get him to safety and take him to a local hospital. Jack was later transferred to an emergency room, Wagner told the San Francisco Chronicle. The child is currently recovering from the attack at his home with his family and is expected to make a full recovery.

“Susie is a real strong mother and she is a hero,” Wagner told the Chronicle. “Obviously it was traumatic, but I think she’s ready to focus on the positives, knowing how much worse it could have been.” Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Captain Patrick Foy agreed, saying: “The attack was very, very brutal in nature. Everything indicates that (the mother) saved her son’s life.” Authorities are still looking for the mountain lion and collected DNA from Jack’s wounds in an effort to find it.

If the animal is captured, “it will not be released back into the wild,” Foy said, but did not elaborate on specific plans for the young mountain lion. “People often ask us to just take (mountain lions) and release them in the ‘middle of nowhere,’ but the location where this attack happened is described as ‘the middle of nowhere,'” Foy told the Chronicle. It was the second such case in California in less than a year and came after a seven-year-old boy was hospitalized after being bitten by a lion near Los Angeles. Sightings of mountain lions are common, but attacks are not. According to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, there have been about 20 confirmed attacks in California in more than a century. “If you are attacked, fight back. This is probably the most important thing for people to understand. It’s not like you’re playing dead. You have to fight for your life,” Foy said.

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