Image
© Lycksele ZooA lynx at Lyksele Zoo.
A teenage girl in northern Sweden had the fright of her life on Wednesday night when a lynx which had escaped from a local zoo leapt out of the woods and pounced on her two-year-old Siberian husky.

Emma Danielsson, 18, had taken Kira out for a walk near her house in the small Sami town of Lycksele at around 11pm when she heard something crashing around in the nearby woods.

"At first I thought it was a fox, but the dog was reacting very strongly and starting to growl," Emma told Aftonbladet.

Then the lynx leapt out of the undergrowth.

"It came out of nowhere. It started to hiss and claw my dog. I was completely in shock and did not know what to do."

The dog then bolted with the lynx in pursuit.


Irene Sjögren, the head of the local Lycksele Zoo, confirmed that lynx tracks found at the site indicated that the attacker was the same animal which escaped from her zoo in November.

"We now have permission to go out with guns," she told SVT's Västerbottensnytt program. "As soon as it gets a bit lighter, we will send out a hunter. We will either stun her, or if that is not possible we will kill her."