Scary Beast
a true story by CE Wills
copyright 2010, all rights reserved
published by Smashwords.com
My wife and I moved to the mountain from an area that was far from being a subdivision. It had been country living of a sort but there were neighbors who liked to watch us every time we went outdoors. So we overreacted and moved to a very remote area. We were unprepared for the diversity of wildlife. Within the first year at our mountaintop retreat we began to notice a lot of tracks at our creek. On days when there had been a recent rain, the creek bank showed tracks very well in the mud.
We decided to buy a book to assist in identifying these tracks and ordered one from Amazon. It was pocket sized and was an immense help. It launched us into a very enjoyable hobby.
We were surprised when we began to find mountain lion tracks in the mud. Indeed we were at first a little skeptical even though the book made it plain that we had indeed found something which any local redneck would have scoffed at. It was at this point that we began to do an Internet study of these amazing creatures. We learned that mountain lions can leap 20 feet straight up, 25 feet horizontally and have been known to jump off a 40 foot cliff when being pursued by a pack of dogs. They are cruel and merciless. They may kill up to 50 sheep in one night for the sheer joy of killing. Their stealthy woodcraft makes them an awesome enemy, worthy of the deepest respect.
Over a period of the next couple of years we noticed tracks of a mother cougar with her cubs, which seemed to warrant an assumption that there was an adult male in the area as well. We were walking in the woods one day and came upon a scent post at the forking of a path. It is an unmistakable thing, the scent post. The lion sprays a quantity of the foulest smelling urine imaginable to mark its territory. It is so strong that it will make your eyes water and make it difficult for you to breath.
One day while sitting in the back yard we saw vultures circling an area in the woods behind our house. Upon investigation we found a deer that had been killed. The deer was full grown and would have weighed 150 pounds. Yet we could see clearly that it had been drug about a fourth of a mile. There was a light snow on the ground and the evidence was unmistakable. The carcass had been ripped open and the lion had started to feed. It was probable that we interrupted its dinner, which is a dangerous thing to do. We took a picture of the carcass and the drag marks which showed in the snow. Everything about the kill was textbook mountain lion behavior. They like to drag their kill to a secluded, low-lying area before they eat.
The entire carcass, including hide, bones, head, everything, was gone on the second day.
In addition to these things we occasionally found lion 'scrapes'. This is an area where a lion will rake back the leaves. A bobcat's scrape is only about a foot square. A mountain lion will leave a scrape twice that size or more.
Still, we had never seen a mountain lion in the flesh. Until.....
On this particular day, my wife and I went for a walk to the creek with no thought in mind of there being a threat to our life. We were, at that time, laboring under the assumption of 'animals avoid humans and are afraid of them'.
We had strolled to the creek, looked for tracks, and was in the process of returning home. Keep in mind that, in our ignorance, we had not brought a gun. We were walking up a steep grade through the woods, laughing like children. The noise made a mountain lion curious, I suppose, because I heard a noise on the ridge opposite the one which we were ascending. When I looked that way I was shocked to see a full-grown lion angling down the face of the ridge toward us. He was trotting, making very little noise in spite of the deep and newly fallen leaves.
The lion was huge, its head would have reached my chest, and it was fully eight feet long if you counted its long, sinuous tail. It was completely unafraid of us and came trotting right up to us. Somewhat alarmed, I picked up a fallen tree limb from the ground and faced the lion. The limb was six feet long and as big around as my forearm. The lion came to a position in front of us and about ten feet from our stance. He looked at us fiercely and as though he was saying, "Nothing personal, but I'm going to eat one or both of you". It made not a sound but paced a bit before us as though searching for the best opening.
I told my wife to head toward the house which she immediately preceded to do. I thought this would be okay because I was between her and the cat. It was not a good idea because the lion immediately pursued her. When I saw this reaction, I leaped after them both with the stick upraised and the lion sheered off a little on a course parallel to my wife's. He jumped into a laurel thicket and disappeared. We arrived home a bit shaken but no worse for wear. As I sat on the deck that evening, I thought of the learned professor who had written a research book on animals of the United States and their habitats. This gentleman, who probably had not left his lab in ten years, said that there were no mountain lions east of the Mississippi River. I wondered what, pray tell, had just sought to eat my wife and I?
A few days later I came outside early one morning to enjoy a cup of coffee and watch the birds. As I sat on the deck I could hear a loud crunching, grinding sound coming from a big clump of mountain laurel at the point where the ridge fell away toward the creek. After a few moments I determined that a lion was laying up with its kill and eating the bones of a deer. Some of the crunches were as loud as gunshots and I could not help but wonder at the power of those jaws that I had recently seen dripping with saliva as he regarded my wife and I.
Several years have slipped away since that time. The stick I picked up for the fight still lays at the head of our trail. It is rotten now and would probably break if I picked it up. Sometimes I'll nod toward it and tell someone what it was used for. To this day I never go down in the woods without my pistol.
CE Wills
For more true stories about animals try my blog at http://authorsgreenretreat.blogspot.com/