A 6-year-old Texas boy is recovering after being attacked by a mountain lion while walking with his family during a vacation at Big Bend National Park. Rivers Hobbs was attacked late Sunday by the animal as his family returned to their room in the Chisos Mountain Lodge.

The mountain lion emerged from the bushes and onto the sidewalk where the family was walking, and clamped its jaws onto the 6-year-old boy's face. Rivers' father, Jason, reached down, retrieved and opened his Spyderco Caly 3.5 folder and used it to stab the mountain lion in the chest, causing the cat to flee. 

“It sneaked up on me,” the young Hobbs said.

"The cat was clamped onto his face, I reached down and got my pocketknife out and stabbed the cat in the chest and it let go at that point,” Jason explained.

The boy's wounds on the right side of his face took 17 stitches to close. The family is expected to return to their Leander, Texas, home late Wednesday. Once there, Hobbs will have to go though a series of rabies shots. 

It was the second such attack of the day in the same area. The mountain lion tried to attack another family but was fended off with a backpack.