Diego

Over at dooce.com, mommy-blogger extraordinaire Heather Armstrong recently chronicled a terrifying, yet hilarious animal encounter she experienced in her new home. While hurriedly searching through a maze of unfamiliar closets to find a box of misplaced photos, she thought she came face to face with the mythical bobcat the previous owner of the house had warned her about.

Heather sez:

"I hadn't checked any of those closets yet, so I moved some boxes out of the way, flung open the door to the closet at the far south of the house, and standing not a foot away from my face was a very large, very hairy animal with giant shining eyes.

Okay. What would you have done in this situation?

Right.

That's what I thought.

I slammed the door, had a heart attack, died, came back to life, and then ran screaming down two flights of stairs. SC-RAH-HEAMING. It just kept coming out of my mouth involuntarily. I couldn't stop it: AAAAAHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHH!

The whole time thinking OH MY GOD I FOUND THE MYTHICAL BOBCAT."

Her assistant quickly took control of the situation, and captured the vicious beast.

The story has a happy ending, too. They were able to track down the cat's overjoyed owner, who flew from Oregon to Utah to reclaim her lost pet. His name is Diego, and he had been missing for a month!

Read the whole chilling tale in its entirety over at dooce.com.