A nine-year-old boy was shocked after running into PUMA.

Following an unscheduled lavatory break during a school football game, a young Brazilian boy had the shock of his life when he spotted a wild puma in the toilet stall.

When David Miguel, nine, pushed open the receptacle door to find a hissing and roaring puma on the other side, his heart “nearly stopped,” and he ran outside to notify his father.

The incident occurred at the Martha Drummond Fonseca Municipal School in the town of Nova Lima, close to the city of Belo Horizonte in the country’s south-eastern region.

“I was trembling like jelly — it went and my heart almost stopped,” said little David to local reporters.

Rodrigo Almeida, 34, acknowledged that he, too, was taken aback when he realized what the creature was: “I assumed it was going to be an ocelot, a wild dog, or something else.” I fled back as soon as I realized the magnitude of the animal.”

The school notified the local fire department and military environmental police, who rushed to the scene and used a tranquillizer dart to calm the animal before releasing the young female back into the wild.

Pumas are the most common large wild terrestrial mammals in the Western Hemisphere, growing up to eight feet long and weighing over 80kg.