Mountain Lion near Santa Cruz

[John Kasaian]

As if there isn't enough to worry about---
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/girl-6-survives-mountain-lion-attack-after-adult-pushes-animal-n1137731

[Two23]

One of the reasons I always have my Swiss Army knife. At night I carry a small .380 pistol when in mountain lion habitat.


Kent in SD

[Drew Wiley]

They're everywhere around here. It's a rare treat to see one, but wildlife night cameras routinely spot em. There have been 18 documented mtn lion attacks in Calif. in the last hundred years, with just a handful of fatalities. Yet in just a single year in this greater metropolitan area alone, five infants were killed by the Pekinese dog breed alone, and over 500 cases of dogbite in the city of SF alone required some kind of emergency treatment that same year. So put that in perspective​. For their size, speed, and power, cougars are one of the world's least dangerous predators. Mule deer might have a different opinion. However, I did get scratched and bit up a few days ago by a feral kitten that wasn't particularly amused by losing a few parts earlier that day at the Vet.

[pendennis]

Most folks never hear a mountain lion attack them. They're super quiet, and you're in their playhouse. Personally, I wouldn't carry a .380, because it's doubtful that that caliber has enough stopping power, and the small bullet weight likely won't penetrate the hide. When I was in Arizona, I carried a hot-loaded Ruger Blackhawk in .45 Colt. Rule is, never get out of sight of your group; and never travel alone.

[Darren Kruger]

Another article: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Cupertino-park-closes-child-mountain-lion-injury-15061367.php

This park is in Cupertino which is a bit away from Santa Cruz. There are plenty of mountain lions in those hills though. UCSC has a program to collar and track mountain lions in the Santa Cruz mountain range. http://www.santacruzpumas.org/puma-tracker. "Note that there are many more mountain lions without collars on them, than are those with collars."

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has a page on mountain lions including things to do if you encounter one. https://wildlife.ca.gov/Keep-Me-Wild/Lion

-Darren

[Drew Wiley]

It was on the news again just a few minutes ago. The little girl is OK. The lion hasn't been caught. If they do tree one with hounds, they'll use a DNA test to see if it's the culprit or not. All depends on how good a lawyer the cat can afford after that. But it might have left the area by now. Cougars are easy to stop with a lung shot. I've been snarled at, but have fortunately never had to pull the trigger. They're beautiful fascinating animals, and it would make me sick to have to kill one. When I was young we did have to shoot a desperate crippled cat that was taking livestock because it was incapable of taking normal game. Up the street from me they sometimes take wild turkeys. I should leave them some cranberry sauce. I never worry about cougars. Ticks are a greater threat.

[tgtaylor]

One the news the park ranger said that there were only 3 mountain lions in that area. I find that a surprisingly low estimate considering the number of deer in the area. A few years back I was struggling up a hill west of Skyline off 84 on a bicycle when all of a sudden a deer leaped across the road from a ridgeline on my right with his hoofs just missing my head. A mountain lion, in hot pursuit, came to a screeching halt - apparently chickening out on leaping the road in the pursuit.

Thomas

[Willie]

We have them and bears as well. More problems with Moose than both put together. Some farmers don't go into corn fields on foot when they get tall as the moose often lay up in them. ATV or Tractor makes it easier to avoid a confrontation.

[reddesert]

The park is in the Santa Cruz range, but not really that close to Santa Cruz city. Mountain lion kills (of deer, not photographers) are relatively common on the UC Santa Cruz campus, and there are signs about how to be aware in mountain lion country on the trails in upper campus. I was fortunate enough to see a mountain lion while mountain biking in Wilder state park across the road. It moved into the bushes to avoid me. Most people will never see one.

Curiously, I have spent many more hours road biking, and never seen a road lion.

Mountain lion attacks are very rare. I run in places where there are occasional lions, and don't worry about it. I'm more worried about spraining my ankle and being out overnight on a cold night. A few suggestions if one encounters a lion that doesn't immediately scram: look big, yell, and throw rocks. Don't run away, and if you are with little kids, I think the advice is to pick them up so they don't look like prey. (How does anyone test whether the picking-up-kids advice works?)

[Drew Wiley]

When hiking on brushy trails in lion habitat it's a good idea to keep small children or conspicuously weak elderly people nearby; but getting paranoid about this topic is absurd. They were all around us when I grew up, and daily wandering around in the brush and rocks alone as a little kid was just routine play. Rattlesnakes were the bigger concern, or a pasture with an aggressive bull. But the screaming caterwauling of mating cougars at night is something you never forget. Those mountain cats were much larger than the ones here on the coast because mule deer are much larger prey than our coastal blacktail deer.

[BradS]

In California, where there are deer and open space/wilderness, there are mountain lions.

[John Kasaian]

In California, where there are deer and open space/wilderness, there are mountain lions.

I wonder what a mountain lion would give for a prawn burrito from El Palomar?:o

[Dugan]

I work near where the attack occurred, and have hiked in that area..
There is a lot of open space...and lots of wildlife.
Deer, wild turkeys, jackrabbits, cottontails, coyotes, etc.
I saw a long-tailed weasel once...rare to see.
Not surprising that there are mountain lions, with so many choices on the menu.

[Jim Andrada]

I used to live in Los Gatos - and the cats referred to were Mountain Lions. I remember a few years back that there was a lion sleeping in a tree in a neighborhood near Stanford that was shot by police. I also remember a student at UC Santa Cruz being chased (or attacked) by one.

Been in Tucson for almost 15 years now in the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains just north of town and while I've never (yet) seen a mountain lion around the house I have seen a few mule deer, so I wouldn't be surprised if the lions were here as well - in fact I'd be surprised if they weren't. We have a friend near the mountains on the west side of town and she says that she's heard them walking around on her roof.

[Drew Wiley]

Everyone was infuriated when that cat was unnecessarily shot. Now they're routinely tranquilizer darted, radio-collared, and relocated to remoter areas. One was even captured napping on someone's back porch near the Presidio in SF. Kittens have been captured in basement crawl spaces. I haven't heard of anyone being chased on campus, but a half-grown young male lion did chase and maul a trail biker in the hills east of Sacramento last yr. Most problems seem to be with young inexperienced males seeking fresh territory, but actual human interaction is extremely rare. About 20 yrs ago a cat was blamed for killing a jogger on a trail outside Sacramento, but it turned out to actually be a homicide which the cat checked out, leaving prints around.

[John Kasaian]

I saw a mountain lion once in British Columbia. Certainly a majestic creature.
https://youtu.be/rhEDfTTJA7A

[Drew Wiley]

Most actual fatalities in North America have occurred on Vancouver Island, BC along a major trail. But even there, the statistical odds of an interaction with a cat are very very low. Two joggers were killed outside Denver in two separate events by the same cat - a released young pet male who didn't know how to fend for itself, seems about 20 yrs ago also. In the entire recorded history of Calif, here where mtn lions are very common state-wide, all the documented fatalities could be counted on less than ten fingers. With pit bull dogs running around, plus gangbangers, the woods seems a lot safer. That cat who mauled a biker last yr weighed only 80 lbs. I've seen up close tomcats in the 250lb range, but the moment they discovered I was watching them, they took off fast. Actually, it was me and an older friend who was a wildlife official; we had a strategy for getting close to cats with no hounds. Both of us were armed for sake of common sense, but never needed to use a gun.

[John Kasaian]

Drew, did mountain lions figure into any California native american lore? I've heard legends about plenty of different animals, but I don't recollect hearing any about mountain lions, or painted images of them either here, in CA?
I figure if anyone would know, you would.

[Mark Sampson]

Jim Andrada's comment about "Los Gatos" reminds me that there are plenty of mountain lions in the Santa Catalina mountains, which are the northern border of Tucson. They live in the east-side Rincon Mountains as well; I don't go into either without remembering that "you won't see them, but they'll see you".

[Drew Wiley]

Good question, John. Although the native peoples were obviously very acquainted with mtn lions, they were such secretive animals that they never seem to have factored much into the legends or rituals of the Miwok, Mono, or Yokuts. Grizzly bears were emblems of ferocity, and there was a bear dance which included wearing the hide of a grizzly plus either real or faux soapstone claws held between knuckles. So grizzlies were sometimes hunted. Coyotes factored in the legends of many Calif tribes as the "Trickster" who upset the original world order, and was otherwise engaged in a career of perpetual deception. Turtles had a prominent place in mythology. Deer, antelope, elk, and bighorn sheep were of course important food sources, and all but antelope were lion prey as well. But's it's always amazed me how little attention the Indians paid to mtn lions, which were more like ghosts that momentarily appeared and then disappeared.

[Bernice Loui]

Mountain Lion aka Cougar encounters Coastside are not rare. Folks that keep goats and similar have lost farm animals to local mountain lions moderately often. Cougars tend to pick off the weak, old and less able. They are an integral part of the Coastside eco system. Keep in mind human beings are visiting their home turf and are subject to all the other critters that live in that turf.

http://www.pescaderocouncil.org/mountain-lion-map



Bernice

[Drew Wiley]

Goats. Oh my! Mtn lions never bothered cattle or sheep whatsoever, and my place was right across the road from a huge sheepherder's plot, back when they were still herded up to the high country every summer. But the far more animated twitchy personality of goats can drive these big cats wild, and coyotes too. Many a coyote has learned the hard way not to mess with a billy goat. I've seen it happen and it's pretty amusing. But those are easy targets for a cougar. That crippled cat I mentioned earlier had been hit by a jeep a couple years before - ironically the jeep of a professional lion hunter! - a hunter whose hounds were far better at scaring cats away than catching them. But that crippled cat, now missing one front leg, managed to jump a goat enclosure fence and went into a frenzy, killing every one of them. So me and a pal were hired to find it. Now it might seem insane, but how we did that is to become potential prey ourselves. Since it couldn't catch deer and was desperate, it would stalk us instead, but have a very hard time actually keeping up with us. I got it to stalk me about six miles through the brush, then my friend took a turn, who lived in the area. It followed his right onto his front porch, where he shot it with a 30-30. And that is the only belligerent lion I've ever encountered in my life. But a co-worker of mine who had a second home in the hills accidentally got between a cougar and his own goats. It charged and he had to shoot it. And those Sierra cats can be twice the size of our coastal ones,
just like mtn coyotes are distinctly bigger than valley and coastal ones. It must have been fun back near the close of the ice age for hunters out amidst a variety of big cats and bears larger than any alive today, when mtn lions and even sabertooth cats were relatively small. There was also an American cheetah, the closest relative of the puma, needing great speed to catch pronghorn antelope, it seems.

[CreationBear]

But's it's always amazed me how little attention the Indians paid to mtn lions, which were more like ghosts that momentarily appeared and then disappeared.

Very interesting, back here in the East when mountain lions were still thick on the ground, they factored into the Native culture in a couple of ways. For the Southeastern tribes, it was SOP to swaddle male infants in panther skin--"on account of the communicative principle" as the famous Indian trader and author, James Adair, puts it. I.e., since the panther has physical and sensory capabilities "beyond any of his fellow animals in the American woods," such clothing "they reckon such a bed is the first rudiments of war."

The other famous incarnation of the mountain lion in their culture is as the piasa--the "Underwater Panther" of Mississippian iconography; i.e. a literally "monstrous" amalgam of feline, serpent, and bird which is often understood to represent the levels of existence (Underworld/This World/the Upper World) traversed by heroes and shamans.

[Drew Wiley]

Thanks for sharing that. Eastern, SW, and NW tribes were very different than our inland California situation, which was nearly apolitical, with almost every little village its own entity, and the biggest variety of disparate language families in the entire W Hemiphere all packed into the same resource-rich space. There were no higher political affiliations or big wars, but endless petty feuds, sometimes genocidal on small scale. No fancy religion, but just some small village shaman hucksterism with minor medical duties, real as well as feigned, plus a nominal chief, often of only a dozen people or so, but potentially of much greater numbers where food was especially abundant. Food was generally so easy to acquire that agriculture was unnecessary. Then to the east of the great rain shadow of the Sierras, the Nevada Paiutes mostly lived in abject poverty, with the Great Basin separating things from the more elaborate cultures of the Southwest. Here the local mythologies were simple, predictable, and colorful; nothing more sinister than the Coyote Trickster. Only down around what is now the Mexican border where there was Meso-American influence did religions take on complexity. I not only studied a lot of this, but grew up with Calif. Indians. It might be that Mississippian culture was itself related to Meso-American themes. But that's not something I know much about. My main interest was actually in ice age Americans, who I am convinced were a lot more sophisticated than the usual chatter gives them credit for; otherwise they wouldn't have spread over the entire W. Hemisphere so efficiently so long ago.

[CreationBear]

It might be that Mississippian culture was itself related to Meso-American themes.

Ha, you wouldn't be the first to suppose a few Nahuatl-speaking Matteo Ricci's with a handful of magic beans and a flair for the dramatic.:) Hard to prove, though.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, I had my own beans to fry, so to speak, so never got involved hypothesizing about relatively advanced American cultures. I was a lot more interested in things many thousands of years before. But I did find it amusing just how full of beans people like Thor Heyerdahl and Gavin Menzies could be attributing everything to old world civilizations. But as far as critters go, people seem to forget that neither mtn lions nor black bears were apex predators around here, so still have an inbuilt shyness to them. That niche belonged to grizzlies and secondarily to wolf packs until about 150 yrs ago.

[Drew Wiley]

It's all over now. They caught the suspect cat and it was a DNA match, so they put it down; a very small one, around 60 lb. The little girl is doing fine.

[C. D. Keth]

So stupid to put it down. It’s just pandering to the idea that we have to be “safe” at all times.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bernice Loui]

The Emotion of FEAR is a very powerful primal drive for survival. Fact is, living and life with Mountain Lions in this area is a reality and Mountain Lions have lived in this area FAR longer than humanity.

About a year ago, there was a pair of Mountain Lion cubs that was discovered running around downtown Half Moon Bay.. Some panicked, Some were held in AWE over their beauty and majesty. Both were eventually captured and are now living at the Oakland Zoo.
https://www.hmbreview.com/news/mountain-lion-cubs-caught-in-hmb/article_9a3d0ba2-349c-11e9-a44c-d789937f8af8.html

Back in 2012, there was community outrage over killing another mountain lion in the same area. Dept of Fish & Game & such should have altered their policy to NOT simply shoot or kill.

If you're willing to venture into their homeland, you're the one trespassing NOT the Mountain Lion, You're the one risking getting attacked (very rare) and it is NOT the Mountain Lions fault.

Killing of big predators is more an expression of irrational Fear driven by the innate drive of survival and the need to "feel" as Top Predator with the ability to control the environment of residence....for perceived security and relief from uncertainty.... All of which is a mere mirage of perception.

And yes, I live in an area where Coyotes roam the streets with Bambi and a host of other wild critters.


Bernice




So stupid to put it down. It’s just pandering to the idea that we have to be “safe” at all times.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Drew Wiley]

Well, there's a protest going on right now about putting down that offender cat yesterday (euthanized under sedation - not shot). It seems to have been a runt having trouble competing for normal game; but who knows what it was really thinking. But catch and release it's now official policy in this whole area unless a cat has been proven to be a threat to people. But city folk, my, my. They went into a panic about two mountain lions around the cemetery up the road; turned out to be two golden retrievers. They confuse bobcats with mtn lions. Some think a coyote is going to eat them. ... But back to hillbilly stories... An employee of my father killed a record-book 300 lb male lion back when they were unprotected game. He made up a fancy story about his life and death ordeal with the monster and sold the tale to Fish & Game magazine. Well, why would any lion get that obese to begin with? It had acquired behavior quite unusual for that species in terms of preferring junk food to natural game, and just like nuisance black bears, had super-sized itself. He heard a ruckus in the garbage can early one morning and simply stuck a gun barrel out the bedroom window.

[reddesert]

60 lb is pretty small for a mountain lion, it could have been juvenile, sick, or a runt as Drew says. Typically a healthy adult will avoid people and not attack them. State wildlife departments justify euthanizing a mountain lion (or bear) that has attacked or eaten people because it has lost the fear of people and may do it again. Is this well-justified? I don't know. The mountain lion that the police shot out of a tree several years ago in the San Jose area was minding its own business and clearly should not have been shot, I think/hope they have changed their protocol after the public outrage.

In Tucson recently a mountain lion and two cubs fed on a human body that was dumped near a trailhead (presumably murdered elsewhere by a human), and the wildlife dept decided to kill the lions, which has caused some outcry - again the justification was that they didn't show fear. It is still very rare to actually see a lion in the mountains, bear sightings and scat are more common. Lions are certainly present, but I would guess that the animals on Jim Andrada's friend's roof are actually bobcats.

[Drew Wiley]

Mtn lions are extremely curious much like other cats, which means that they can deliberately stalk people for this benign reason alone. But then if something happens to trigger a different instinct, like wearing an antler hat and running away on all fours, the game can change. What we would do is put a bright red or yellow kerchief in a back pocket and slowly walk dirt roads where we knew they were common. Curious lions would follow at a distance, then we'd take turns hiding behind trailside trees to watch them walk by. One enormous tomcat placed his pawprints precisely inside our own bootprints in the mud to try to fool us if we backtracked. It's an amazing behavior I've heard of leopards doing too.

[Bob Salomon]

Mtn lions are extremely curious much like other cats, which means that they can deliberately stalk people for this benign reason alone. But then if something happens to trigger a different instinct, like wearing an antler hat and running away on all fours, the game can change. What we would do is put a bright red or yellow kerchief in a back pocket and slowly walk dirt roads where we knew they were common. Curious lions would follow at a distance, then we'd take turns hiding behind trailside trees to watch them walk by. One enormous tomcat placed his pawprints precisely inside our own bootprints in the mud to try to fool us if we backtracked. It's an amazing behavior I've heard of leopards doing too.

In 1954 I was a junior curator at the Stamford Museum in CT. One of my jobs was to sweep out the mountain lion’s cage. He was an old, toothless lion, but very friendly. If you didn’t pen him up at the back of his cage he would just rub or lean against you. Apparently he had been hand raised since he was a cub.

[Drew Wiley]

What a wonderful experience, Bob! I once worked for a fellow who kept two fully toothed, fully-clawed mtn lions in his house, lounging on his sofa. He said he didn't like the way they looked at him, so eventually got rid of them. There was a beautiful gray tamed one near here at the Marine World theme park, which they walked around on a leash just like the cheetah. Lions and tigers, however, were only exercise either off-hours or within their penned areas. It was popular to watch a handler using a huge thick rope to play with tigers when they were swimming around in their enclosure pool. But one of the lions terribly mauled its handler one day; he barely survived, and called it a cat and mouse experience. The couger and cheetah were brought out into the open and had the same benign smile-like expression, and loved being scratched right in front of people, but only by their official handlers, of course. I'd be a lot more wary of a bobcat than a pet cougar, although my brother had a tame bobcat in his house in the Oregon desert - they seem to be a more mild-mannered subspecies there. I never had any luck trying to tame bobcat kittens.

[Bob Salomon]

What a wonderful experience, Bob! I once worked for a fellow who kept two fully toothed, fully-clawed mtn lions in his house, lounging on his sofa. He said he didn't like the way they looked at him, so eventually got rid of them. There was a beautiful gray tamed one near here at the Marine World theme park, which they walked around on a leash just like the cheetah. Lions and tigers, however, were only exercise either off-hours or within their penned areas. It was popular to watch a handler using a huge thick rope to play with tigers when they were swimming around in their enclosure pool. But one of the lions terribly mauled its handler one day; he barely survived, and called it a cat and mouse experience. The couger and cheetah were brought out into the open and had the same benign smile-like expression, and loved being scratched right in front of people, but only by their official handlers, of course. I'd be a lot more wary of a bobcat than a pet cougar, although my brother had a tame bobcat in his house in the Oregon desert - they seem to be a more mild-mannered subspecies there. I never had any luck trying to tame bobcat kittens.

When our monkey died my wife insisted that we replace him. So we drove from Niceville to a dealer in exotic pets in Panama City, FL. When we entered the shop he had 2 beautiful foxes, in cages, by the door. One was red and the other a beautiful grey. I was petting the grey fox, they were the same price as a squirrel monkey, as were descended skunks and rattlesnakes, $25.00 each. As I was petting the fox I asked him if they were tame? He said “one was”. As he said that the grey one hissed and I pulled my hand away just as his jaws snapped shut! If they didn’t have an odor I probably would have bought the red one. But we wet home without any animal. His monkeys were just not tame enough.

[Drew Wiley]

Oh my! I've never had a monkey. But when I was little, before our own house was built, we lived in a tiny house atop a hill in a very small town.There was no such thing as pre-school or kindergarten. Women didn't work except at home, so they'd come over for tea in their pillbox hats and sit cramped on the sofa. I was around 4 or so. The kitten would jump up on the sofa arm and one of the women would instinctively reach over and start petting it while still sipping tea and chatting. Then there would be sideways glance, a sudden shriek, and all those ladies would run out of the house. It was a pet skunk.

[Bob Salomon]

Oh my! I've never had a monkey. But when I was little, before our own house was built, we lived in a tiny house atop a hill in a very small town.There was no such thing as pre-school or kindergarten. Women didn't work except at home, so they'd come over for tea in their pillbox hats and sit cramped on the sofa. I was around 4 or so. The kitten would jump up on the sofa arm and one of the women would instinctively reach over and start petting it while still sipping tea and chatting. Then there would be sideways glance, a sudden shriek, and all those ladies would run out of the house. It was a pet skunk.

Had a similar experience. Have had 2 pet skunks, one an adult and the other a baby. One day we were walking the baby on a leash and one of our neighbors was mowing his lawn.
It was a very hot summer day and he was very large and overweight, as he made a pass in front of us I took the skunk off his leash and put him behind him. Then called him and pointed behind him. Thought he would have a heart attack. Never saw anyone that heavy jump that far!

[Jim Andrada]

Well, if she said mountain lion on the roof i think I'd believe her. She lives right up against the mountains and there are a lot of bobcats around - the way she described it, she was hearing something pretty heavy walking on the roof.

I was talking with my next door neighbor one day and he said his son had come home from somewhere and left the front door open while he picked something up and left. A couple of hours late they were all heading out to a restaurant and he went into the family room to turn on a light and noticed a bobcat sleeping under the piano - it must have followed his son into the house. Had a few anxious minutes trying the decide how to evict the cat when it just got up and walked out the door.

My wife and I were walking one day and saw something dog sized cross the road ahead of us - then we realized that it was a large bobcat. it walked along with us about 30 feet away for a few hundred yards, then plopped down under a tree for a nap.

Another time I was at the local IBM site (since largely turned into a U of A research park, although IBM still has 500 or so folks there) There are covered walkways between the buildings and as we came out a door we looked up into a tree next to the building and saw a bobcat snoozing contentedly on a branch.

One day my wife's piano tuner came by to work on the pianos (yeah - pianos plural - two full sized grands. She was a concert pianist for a lot of years until arthritis ruined her hands.) Anyway, the tuner lives pretty far out of town and he likes to work on cars. He said there are always bobcats around and there was one female in particular who lived in back of his house for a long time - he said that when she had a litter she brought the kittens to the door to "introduce" them. One day he was under a car fixing something when the kittens crawled under the car to see what he was doing. They followed him when he stood up and he said they looked so cute that he couldn't resist picking one of them up. Big mistake. I asked him if the mother had attacked him and he said Hell no - but the kitten really stank and it took forever to get the smell out of his shirt.

When we lived in Tokyo there was a guy a few blocks away who had a leopard and a wolf. Right in downtown Tokyo.

[ic-racer]

Not sure where Santa Cruz is, but our neighbor's tabby cat got out last week. This incident created quite a stir with the murine and ornithological wildlife in the microenvironmenet between the houses. In fact the creature murdered one or two Turdus migratorius species in the area before being captured and returned to captivity.
Sadly, no photographs exist of the incident.

[Drew Wiley]

Santa Cruz is a seaside resort town backed by hills of brush and redwood groves with an exceptionally dense mtn lion population. These cats frequently wander into residential areas and Stanford University on the opposite side of that ridge, basically Silicon Valley, where this latest incident occurred in one of their parks. So basically, you have many miles of ideal habitat being encroached on one side by Silicon Valley "residences" (unbelievably expensive real estate with lots of pretty trees and yards lions like to explore, lounge in, raise kittens, and find deer in).

[reddesert]

Well, if she said mountain lion on the roof i think I'd believe her. She lives right up against the mountains and there are a lot of bobcats around - the way she described it, she was hearing something pretty heavy walking on the roof.

I was talking with my next door neighbor one day and he said his son had come home from somewhere and left the front door open while he picked something up and left. A couple of hours late they were all heading out to a restaurant and he went into the family room to turn on a light and noticed a bobcat sleeping under the piano - it must have followed his son into the house. Had a few anxious minutes trying the decide how to evict the cat when it just got up and walked out the door.

My wife and I were walking one day and saw something dog sized cross the road ahead of us - then we realized that it was a large bobcat. it walked along with us about 30 feet away for a few hundred yards, then plopped down under a tree for a nap.

Another time I was at the local IBM site (since largely turned into a U of A research park, although IBM still has 500 or so folks there) There are covered walkways between the buildings and as we came out a door we looked up into a tree next to the building and saw a bobcat snoozing contentedly on a branch.



Here is a bobcat that ran across the road in front of me a few miles up the Mt. Hopkins Road south of Tucson. She or he stopped in the bushes and I was able to get out and take a picture. (Sorry, not actually a large format photo - I'm not that fast.)

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49579934933_c72cea84ff_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2ixd8jn)DSCF9002 (https://flic.kr/p/2ixd8jn) by reddesert64 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/53623804@N00/), on Flickr

[Jim Andrada]

Bobcats and mountain lions - pffffft. The jaguars are back in the mountains south of Tucson. Google "El Jefe"

But this is a nice photo - I have to rummage around for a few of a young bobcat on our back fence a couple of years back.

[Drew Wiley]

Jaguars are all around here too. I can think of four entire dealerships.

[EH21]

They're everywhere around here. It's a rare treat to see one, but wildlife night cameras routinely spot em. There have been 18 documented mtn lion attacks in Calif. in the last hundred years, with just a handful of fatalities. Yet in just a single year in this greater metropolitan area alone, five infants were killed by the Pekinese dog breed alone, and over 500 cases of dogbite in the city of SF alone required some kind of emergency treatment that same year. So put that in perspective​. For their size, speed, and power, cougars are one of the world's least dangerous predators. Mule deer might have a different opinion. However, I did get scratched and bit up a few days ago by a feral kitten that wasn't particularly amused by losing a few parts earlier that day at the Vet.

Thank you for posting, was thinking along the same lines....
Way more people are killed by their own dogs and their own guns than anyone ever has by big cats
Makes me much more worried to be out in the hills at night knowing a bunch of people are packing heat and could ready to shoot the first thing that moves...

[Alan Klein]

Thank you for posting, was thinking along the same lines....
Way more people are killed by their own dogs and their own guns than anyone ever has by big cats
Makes me much more worried to be out in the hills at night knowing a bunch of people are packing heat and could ready to shoot the first thing that moves...

Isn't that comparison different? After all, there are millions of people around where dogs are. So there are more attacks by dogs compared to the relatively few people who hike where wild predators hunt. Reminds me of the joke about the guy who drowned in a lake that had an average depth of 2 feet. He was unlucky enough to fall into a spot 15 feet deep.

[Alan Klein]

One of the reasons I always have my Swiss Army knife. At night I carry a small .380 pistol when in mountain lion habitat.


Kent in SD

Wouldn't a revolver be better. Don;t you need a second hand to charge a 380? With a revolver, it can be fired with one hand right away.

[Drew Wiley]

There was another video on the new last night of a mountain lion snooping around someone's back door, deck, and garden around here. It's getting rather common. But Alan, people have been living amidst mtn lions many thousands of years. Their original overall range is remarkable, spanning most of both North and South America, proving how highly adaptable they are. Yet I never once heard an Indian story or legend of an attack. Dogs are a different story; they've been bred to guard. By far the most dangerous predator is Homo sapiens, and bears and lions learned that long ago. In the Pleistocene, mountain lions and even saber-toothed cats were relatively diminutive felines compared to certain others. Even grizzly bears weren't apex predators. But humans knew how to kill much bigger animals. But if guys want to spin tall tales sipping bourbon around the campfire to impress their buddies with how big a gun they own to deal with all the vicious clawed monster critters running around determined to eat them, and why it takes a four thousand dollar rifle to shoot a deer - and then more likely shoot themselves in the foot drunken - I guess it's a right of passage, so to speak. I've had many a meal of game over a campfire, and spent way too many days wandering through the woods and canyons and peaks to even count. But never once have I worried about mountain lions. Aggressive dogs on the loose, yes.

[j enea]

i hike rancho san antonio often. last year they closed many of the higher up in the hills trails because of a Mt lion spotting. we have taken over their area, their habitat, in my mind, and all they are trying to do is survive. I hope this sighting does not get over blown. leave them alone and more often than not they will leave us alone.

[Drew Wiley]

Human fatalities: what is the most dangerous animal? - the mosquito, and they'll never leave us alone.

[Bob Salomon]

Human fatalities: what is the most dangerous animal? - the mosquito, and they'll never leave us alone.

Only some and then only the female ones.

[Drew Wiley]

Always blame the ladies, Bob? Well, they blame us for everything that goes wrong, so I guess that's fair.

[C. D. Keth]

Human fatalities: what is the most dangerous animal? - the mosquito, and they'll never leave us alone.

I have heard entomologists and immunologists who study mosquitoes estimate that half of the human beings who ever died did so because of a mosquito carried illness.

[Tin Can]

But even the skeets are dying

Here they have become tiny, invisible to me

all the bugs are dying out here in Fly Over land

Used to be I had to stop often to clean the bugs off the windshield, now never

Birds are moving North, 1000's of Black birds attacked my yard last week for worms and maybe voles

[Drew Wiley]

We've got a lot of regular blackbirds, but the beautiful and melodious redwing blackbird flocks, once plentiful, are getting smaller and smaller. Saw a migrating flock a few days ago. They're dependent of native marshes, which have not only been widely drained, but basically fumigated by farm insecticides. Now somebody out of state with zero education in the issue wants to divert a lot of the water that is already in short supply; but I won't elaborate. The irony is that as more corridors of native grasses and bugs are removed, and the more chemicals need to be used to gain the upper hand, and there goes all the natural pest predators like ladybugs too. Farmers end up in a vicious cycle where insecticide-resistant super-pest insects get harder and harder to kill. Super boll weevils almost destroyed the SoCal cotton farms. Yes, small organic farming operation are catching on; but they can't prevent drift-over from what's being sprayed in the adjacent big operations, or even things like freeway exhaust if near one of those. But then there are critters like coyotes, deer, skunks, possums, raccoons, wild turkeys, and now even mtn lions that are successfully adapting.

[Bernice Loui]

This happens on Coastside trails more often than most realize.. Notice the expression on this Lion. They typically don't want human contact in any way.
Know when on these trails, YOU'RE in their turf and subject to their ways. If you're not willing to accept this reality, do not enter their turf.

201387


Bernice

[Chauncey Walden]

Near Loveland, Colorado, off the road to Rocky Mountain National Park, one attacked 5 horses (one had to be put down), then chomped a lady's shoulder, then attacked a deputy, and was finally tracked and killed by a wildlife officer. A busy day.

[Dan Dozer]

I used to live in Cupertino probably no more than a mile or two from this location. Never experienced anything like this. There are a number of highly wooded areas there and this is probably where it happened. Now I live in Palm Springs where we don't have that . . . . or do we? After I moved into my new home a number of years ago in a new development, my neighbor several doors up the street went out on his back patio one morning to have a cup of coffee at sun up and laying in the grass in his back yard on the other side of his swimming pool was a mountain lion. He made a hasty retreat back into his house.

[Darren Kruger]

Yesterday there was a mountain lion sighting in San Francisco near Russian Hill

https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/Video-mountain-lion-wandering-in-San-Francisco-15344437.php

-Darren

[Drew Wiley]

It was a rather young confused cat that had wandered all over town, and was too small to be safely tranquilized, so they successfully netted him somewhere downtown, and released him in the woods well to the south, where they believe he had first come from. Around the same time, one of numerous bears coming out of the hills to enjoy an LA swimming pool woke up a woman lounging there, scratching her and once biting her leg. They cornered several bears known to roam that area; but so far, no DNA match, so the hunt for the culprit goes on.

[Drew Wiley]

Now that particular kitty is suspected of having chomped a couple of kangaroos in the SF zoo.