cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lions Three walls. I have three walls built now. One more to go. That one I did last night took forever to get the window opening framed for some reason. Building walls is fun! Oh, my rifle came! The Mauser that I sent off for custom work. It's sitting at the post office right now and I have to go pick it up during lunch. It's driving me batshit, knowing that it's right there and it's all ready and I don't get to look at it until after work. I might take today off from building the workshop in order to fiddle with the rifle. I've got all these other custom parts to install myself, plus I have the scope to mount. The glass bedding project will probably have to wait until this weekend. There's a whole thing with mountain lions lately. Officially, there are no mountain lions in this state. As a practical matter, there have been so many sightings lately that it's becoming pretty clear that we've got a bunch of them in this county. My next door neighbor saw one feeding on some roadkill. There was recently a front page story in the local paper about a spate of sightings on the other side of the county. My friend Lars mentioned in an email yesterday that he saw one crossing the road. I read a thing in Salon about cougar attacks in British Columbia that included the following: "A few years ago, a cougar attacked a lady in the woods, ate her while she was still alive and totally conscious, covered her in leaves and grasses -- hiding his kill -- but a good friend of mine found her, the cat challenged him, circling, and he shot the cat dead. My friend spoke to the woman, and she said, 'Now I'm dying,' and it was the last thing she said." Then there was this gem: "And to my shock and surprise, I turned my head, and there, about 40 feet from me, at the base of a spruce tree, all curled up, head down, swishing his tail, was an adult cougar. I ducked, and I did it softly: Movement causes a cougar to attack -- you try to back up, you try to run, he'll pounce. "I snuck back a distance of 150 feet, and I was walking to my car and I heard nothing when he hit me. First time in 60 years of hunting that I've ever been attacked. Oh my goodness! It was like a baseball bat to the back of the neck, the blood is filling my ears and running down my shoulders and I'm down in the snow: four big canine teeth embedded in the muscles of my neck, and in the blink of an eye it let go and grabbed me again and then it shook its head just like it was killing a deer, shaking the life out. This is all in dead silence, no growling, no hissing, and I said, 'Clarence, this cougar is going to kill you.' " Huh. You know, I really do not particularly want these things living in my backyard when I have a toddler and a 4 year old and 3 dogs running around. The bears, bobcats, snakes and coyotes are quite enough, thank you. Now maybe all we have around here are a couple of solitary males that went a really, really long way when they dispersed from their natal territories on reaching maturity somewhere hundreds of miles west of here. Males travel a lot farther to establish their own territories than females do, so when you suddenly have a lion in a place where there were no lions for decades, odds are that it is a male. So maybe there is not a breeding population per se. I prefer to learn to live with wildlife rather than force my will on it. If all that happens is that there continue to be sightings but people and pets aren't getting attacked, then I'm ok with the situation. Preferred prey and methods of hunting are learned behavior among the big cats and if there's just a couple of male lions who prefer to eat deer and carrion and will never have cubs that could grow up to acquire different tastes, then I think we should leave those lions alone. However, if there is a breeding population then eventually some of them will notice some of the other very easy prey that is around in the form of horses, dogs and humans. Should that happen, I'm taking up lion hunting. 09:25 - 2008-03-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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