Four-year-old girl lucky to be alive after being attacked by a mountain lion.

A four-year-girl who wandered from a camp site is lucky to be alive after she ended up in the mouth of a mountain lion.

Kelsi Butt was camping with her family in a national park in Idaho in the United States on Friday when her mother, Kera Butt, put her down for a nap.

“It was after dinner that I took her and her cousins to the tent because they were all playing together,” Kera told ABC.

But shortly after putting her daughter down, Kelsi wandered off from the camp unnoticed by her family.

Moments later, a mountain lion pounced on the little girl, clutching her in its mouth.

The mountain lion attack on Kelsi Butt left her with deep cuts and scratches. Source: ABC News.

"It just grabbed her with its teeth and flipped her over and then went to grab her again and we were there," Kera said. "I ran to her screaming, running at the lion."

Thankfully, the screaming and running of Kelsi's family seemed to scare the mountain lion, who dropped the little girl and ran off.

Kera rushed to Kelsi, who was scratched and bruised from the attack.

An adult mountain lion. Source: Wikipedia. 

"I ran over to her and scooped her and she's just clinging to me and the first thing I do is just look at her body," Kera said. "I just look her over and see if I could see anything wrong. I'm expecting blood everywhere, something, and I see the marks on her ribs and I know she's okay and this overwhelming peace comes over me."

Following the attack, Kera said that she had seen what she thought was a large mountain lion in the Green Canyon Hot Spring site earlier that evening, but explained, "We didn't think we were in danger. We thought it was passing through, but now we know it was actually stalking the kids because they had come up for dinner."

Kera said her daughter has now been nicknamed the "Puma Princess" by her family.