Originally Posted by
Drew Wiley
Alan. It made no difference to the cougars if we were armed or not. They followed us due to curiosity. And in this case "curiosity didn't kill the cat." They took extreme care not to be noticed, but we had set up a tag team system to fool them. Once they figured out they'd been made, they instantly ran off back into the woods. Cougars are instinctively very shy of people, even when routinely around people. But a few of them are learning how to suburbanize themselves, just like coyotes and raccoons and skunks and so forth. There are plenty of deer inside city limits too. Humans aren't viewed as food. Remember, they've had at least fifteen thousands of years in the Western Hemisphere of cumulative experience and genetic adaptation to the fact that the most aggressive and successful species of predator is actually us. They have good reason to be more afraid of us than we are of them.