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| Photo credit: Pixabay |
It’s too big to be a housecat, is it a bobcat? No, it has a long swishy tail, bobcats have a short bobbed one, then—
Don’t move. It’s a young cougar!
Cougars are a rare sight around our place. In the 20 years we’ve lived in the Foothills, I’ve seen a cougar three, maybe four times—which is why it took me an instant to identify this one.
Just as I stopped—I was about 1/8 of a mile from home—the cougar saw me too. It looked back at me for a moment, then loped into the brush. Since it seemed about half or maybe two-thirds the size of the adult cougars I’d seen, I wasn’t particularly alarmed…
Until I remembered the magazine article I’d read a few months back.
Five women were cycling through a fairly remote trail in Northern California. A cougar attacked one of the cyclists, knocking her off her bike. All four other women leaped to her defense, but by then, the cougar had locked its victim’s head in its jaws.
These intrepid women tried to pull the cougar off their friend, but the big cat would not be deterred. Finally, the four of them smashed one of their bikes on top of the cougar, and used their body weight to subdue the animal until help arrived.
Only then, did the cougar release its hold on their friend’s head.
The woman, miraculously, lived. It took many, many surgeries, however, to repair her wounds.
All this was going through my head as I walked home. And although I wasn’t truly scared, you can bet I looked behind me every few seconds.
Living here in the Foothills, along with weather patterns and gardening quirks, you quickly pay attention to another country-living lesson: what to do if you’re faced by a threatening wild animal.
Take bears.
I heard a memorable saying:
If it’s Black, fight back.
If it’s Brown, lay down.
If it’s White, say “Goodnight.”
Black bears are common in our area. (We do not have the more aggressive Brown bears or Grizzlies. And obviously, no Polar bears!) So I know if a black bear comes at me, intent on attacking, I need to shout and wave my arms—and if it actually does get close, I must defend myself and fight.
Lucky for me, all the black bears I’ve encountered on our lane or on my bike rides have been well-behaved, i.e., as soon as they’ve seen me, they have simply gone about their business, and/or hurried for cover.
The advice for cougar encounters is different. Face the cougar, and back away, slowly and quietly. Whatever you do, do not turn your back—and absolutely do NOT run away. The cougar will think you’re prey.
For my most memorable cougar encounter, 13 years ago, I was too upset to think about being sensible…
* * *
One sunny July morning, all four hens started squawking like crazy. As I passed the woodsheds to check on them, it sounded like the birds were actually rattling their fence. A girl fight? That didn’t seem like our hens at all! I hurried to their pen.
There, on the other side of it, hardly fifteen feet away, was a large wild cat.
I stopped cold. Was it the same bobcat that had killed our neighbor’s hens, two months before, in broad daylight?
But the bobcat’s reputation for shyness must have been a rural legend. Because this big cat locked eyes with me, and didn’t even move when I yelled, “Go away! Go away! Get out of here!”
After a long moment, it pounced against the fence one more time, as if to say, “Ha! You don’t scare me!” and melted into the brush.
That’s when I turned away and ran back to the house, calling for John…
(Later that night, the cat would return, and again two days later, to finish what it had come to do…)
Four months later:
I spotted a big cat from our living room window. It was staring longingly through the fence, like it would have liked to nab a rabbit, but had no intention of exerting itself too much.
My gaze was drawn to its short body and bobbed tail—then I met the cat’s eyes. “Oh my God,” I breathed.
The animal’s face was narrow and streaked with black markings. As for its eyes…I can’t quite explain it, but this cat didn’t look threatening at all.
If the cartoon character Tweedy Bird had seen this critter, he probably would have said, “I t’ink I see a puddy-tat.”
I instantly pictured the animal I’d found at our coop a few months ago. This larger cat had a long, lanky body, and a wide, tawny-colored face, with bold, piercing eyes that stared right back at you.
Its expression was fierce and insolent. And I’ll never forget the brazen way it had banged against the fence.
In my fear for the hens, I’d assumed the animal was a bobcat. But I realized how wrong I’d been.
What a huge mistake I had made.
It was a cougar that had killed our hens. A cougar that had had the nerve, the guts to climb our fence, and squeeze through the hens’ tiny door, and go on a wholesale killing spree. Not a bobcatty thing to do at all.
Although as it turned out, when it came to our hens, bobcats did take the prize for being the most determined predators…
—Adapted from my memoir Little Farm in the Henhouse
* * *
While the wildlife around our place have been really interesting this year, I haven’t posted much—I strained my right shoulder last fall, and keyboarding has been painful!
It turned out to be a rotator cuff tear, but I’m happy to report my shoulder is much better…just in time for blueberry harvest time, which takes two good arms 😊
I also want to say my Little Farm blog has been and always will be 100% written by me! It’s a great joy to share my real-life homesteady stories, and my husband John and I never seem to run out of interesting experiences with wild critters…
Regarding the photo above: I don’t carry a cell phone on my walks, because we don’t have service out here in the boonies…the reason I need to use stock photos for my big cat encounters!
But not always…here’s one of our own photos, when we saw a bobcat relaxing in our back yard a couple of years ago.
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| Photo by John Browne |
The cougar story here is from my monthly newsletter, and if you’re interested in more, you can sign up for my list on my website, at www.susancolleenbrowne.com
Thank you so much for visiting my blog—and now that my shoulder is much improved, I plan to be posting more regularly from here on out!
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