An Ontario man who shot a viral video of two lynx shrieking in each other's faces says he's no stranger to the animals, but was shocked by what he saw.
"I knew right away it was going to be a rare, special capture," said Ed Trist, who lives off the grid in the northern reaches of Ontario.
Lynx are normally skittish, he noted, so he was surprised that the creatures stuck around after he, his girlfriend and his 11-year-old daughter came across them while driving their ATV down a logging road on Friday evening.
The videos — one shot by Trist, one by his girlfriend — show two lynx sitting face-to-face, shrieking, their foreheads nearly touching.
In a phone interview on Tuesday, Trist likened the sound to that of children yelling.
At one point in the video, one of the cats takes a swipe at the other, but neither backs down.
"This is so frickin' cool," Trist can be heard saying in the video. "This is so cool! Who runs into this?"
Neither Trist nor his daughter was scared, he said, noting that they were both "used to it."
"I see them often, but just brief glimpses," he said.
Trist said the cats were still at it when he left after about 10 minutes of watching, so he doesn't know which one came out on top in the non-violent faceoff.
By early Tuesday, the videos had together amassed more than 12 million views and drawn attention from around the world.
Trist said he's been fielding calls from Australia, Germany and the U.K.
