Man in Underwear Wrestles Leopard to the Ground

Tel Aviv, Israel (APTN) - A leopard was taken for treatment in Beit Dagan near Tel Aviv on Monday, after having been wrestled to the ground by a man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt.

Nature guide Arthur Du Mosch was woken by the cat after it leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family. He managed to pin it to the ground and held it there for twenty minutes until help arrived.

Du Mosch's pet cat was in the bed with him at the time, along with his young daughter, who had been frightened by a mosquito in her own room.

The head of the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half dozen leopards have been spotted recently near the small community of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel. He said it was probably food that lured the big cat.

Leopards living near humans are usually too old to hunt in the wild and resort to chasing down domestic dogs and cats for food, he added.

"In the last three weeks this leopard has almost daily entered the Ben Gurion school in the south," said Haim Berger, a researcher from Ben Gurion university in Beer Sheva.

Following the check up the leopard was taken to a southern zoo in Kibbutz Yotvata. Nature officials said they would likely release it back into the wild