Cougar at Your Front Door?

Cougar at your front door?

That's not a pretty picture in my mind. I love wildlife. I love looking at pictures of animals in the wild. And I even watch some of the Discovery channel programs. I watch until some animal decides to kill another animal. Yes, I know it is the way it is. There are prey animals and then there are predators. One eats the other. It is for survival. It's the way it's supposed to be. But I prefer not to watch it.

I also eat meat. Yes, red meat. A nice, fat, juicy steak off the barbecue. And Hubby Honey makes the best barbecued chicken wings. But, once again, I don't watch it get killed.

So, a horse is a prey animal. We humans are predators. Predators eat prey animals. That's why horses can have a problem with us. We come across as predators.

Want to get an idea for how this feels?

I once heard a story of an event in Southern Oregon where there was a cougar wandering the area. There had been a number of sightings reported. One evening a friend of a friend of mine came home after dark. She needed to feed her horses yet. She went to her barn. The light switch was apparently not easily reached from the doorway. She had to go into the barn aways to reach the switch. She didn't think much about it. She'd done it many times. She flipped the switch. For some reason she looked up. There in the barn rafters was a cougar. A cougar staring down at her.

Can you imagine her feelings right at that point in time?

I thought of that story a few times, but it didn't hit me. I tried to feel the feeling, tried to emphasize with my horses. But, I really didn't get it.

The last two days I have been off helping a friend as she gets ready to publish a book on her natural horse training methods. I guess I was "photographer/production assistant/gopher." It was fun.

But, when I arrived on Tuesday, she came out of her RV and said, "Look!" (She just bought twenty acres east of Reno and is living in a RV while her house is under construction.) I looked (not knowing what I was looking at) and said, "Okay?"

Her back to me, "It's cougar pee."

"Oh."

This was within twenty-five feet of the front door of her RV. The night before when she had come home (since it was after dark), she had even pulled her truck in so it was about five feet from the front door of her RV so she could jump out of her truck and into her RV.

On previous nights her dog had acted very strange. The next morning she had spotted what she thought were cougar tracks. She had heard the cougar not far from her RV at night. And there had been strange noises under her RV. Just a couple days before her neighbor had taken a couple pictures of a cougar on his front deck.

Want to know what a horse feels? Think of having a cougar roaming your yard at night.

I used to take walks outside here after dark. I felt safer here than in any other place I've lived in a city or suburb. Last night I had to go out after dark to try to find my cat to get him in to eat. I always try to get my cat in at night. That's when my cats have disappeared in the past. They don't understand the coyotes and owls are out at night. That's another story.

There was a report last year here of a cougar sighting here in our valley. It was going down the road with a white dog in it's mouth. Neighbor's have reported finding tracks behind their houses. My farrier once asked me if I had ever heard the cougars here.

Cougars, here?

Things are starting to hit home.

My friend having them right outside her front door marking their territory, then thinking of what I've heard about them here in my own valley. I am now getting an understanding of what a prey animal might feel.

Last night, after dark, when I was looking for my kitty cat, I was also looking for another cat. Knowing it most likely wasn't there. Hoping it wasn't there, but being extra cautious, extra on alert for something out of the ordinary. Jumpy and protective. Feeling the feelings of a prey animal.

Not a good feeling. I only hope, by the methods I recently learned, that my horses never feel I am the cougar. I do have two here who have reacted that way. I've been working hard to change their viewpoint.

Just think about it. Can you feel what a prey animal might feel because of the ways we approach it? Not a fun feeling, huh?

Got a cougar right at your front door?