Metallica frontman James Hetfield has reached out to a fan after learning she used his group’s music to scare off a cougar. Dee Gallant, a Vancouver Island resident, hit the news last month when she thanked the guys from Metallica for saving her life after she fended off a wild cougar by blasting their 1991 song ‘Don’t Tread on Me’.
Her and her eight-year-old husky retriever Murphy were on a local trail just outside of Duncan, BC when they came face-to-face with the threatening cougar. As the beast approached her and her dog, Gallant pulled out her phone and blasted the Black Album classic, scaring it off.
“I thought it was the noisiest thing on my phone that would probably scare it.”
Hearing the news, Metallica frontman James Hetfield, 56 took it upon himself to reach out to Dee Gallant, calling her last weekend.
“I was a little bit lost for words,” Gallant told CTV News. “It’s surreal how quickly it happened and how far it’s gone. The fact that he’s so down to earth and such a great person, I’m very pleased to find that out first-hand. If you had told the 18-year-old me that this would happen, I never would’ve believed it. I would’ve just fallen out of my skin with excitement.”
Following their phone call, Hetfield raised his horns and sent Gallant a selfie over text.
“Thought you might like some confirmation that it was me,” he wrote.
