The AP does a story tonight on what I've been saying all along - we're not mountain lion's friends. We're potential food. (so it's them or us).
Carrie Ann Warner has repeatedly called authorities about the stalker that has peered into her son's bedroom window at night, killed the family cat and even chased the family into their home in the wooded hills west of Denver.
The mountain lion has eluded wildlife officers perched on the porch with shotguns, traps baited with roadkill and even a motion-detection camera fastened to a pine tree.
Six-year-old Schylure told his parents the lion stared into his room "like it was mad at me."
"We're living in this vale of fear," said Carrie Ann Warner, whose family has built a steel enclosure around their back porch. "I've reached my wit's end. I don't know what to do."
Reports of mountain lions roaming neighborhoods and devouring family pets have cropped up from suburban Denver to Fort Collins, one of the most heavily populated stretches in the Rockies. In April, a lion attacked and broke the jaw of a 7-year-old boy on a trail in Boulder before it was chased off.
and..But some Colorado residents say they're living in fear of the mountain lions, which can weigh as much as 180 pounds.
Tracey English no longer allows her teenage son to jog by himself in a nearby open space and her dog stays inside unless it's being walked on a leash. Last month a mountain lion was captured in a trap in her backyard.
"I don't feel like we're living in a natural wilderness. Nothing about it is natural," English said. "I believe the lions need to be managed."
Jesus. Read it here as a scary bedtime story for your kids.
When are people going to realize that we're part of the food chain, and unless we start using the intellect that has moved us to the top, these seldom-managed carnivorous predators are going to remind us in a horrific way? Time to thin their numbers, considerably.Before it's too late.
Comments
Jeez. Get off it.
Fatalities in the shower are more common than mountain lion attacks.
Not saying people shouldn't look out for their families, but, saying "it's them or us" appears to be an exaggeration.
I’ll bet you’d like to see us thinned out. We really are a greater threat to flaming liberals than mountain lions will ever be.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Mountain lion report for Harrisburg, SD. I've kept them all at bay. So, I'm still top of the food chain, at least in this little corner of the Garden Spot of South Dakota. But if they raise their hairy little heads, their toast in Harrisburg on my watch.
Todd Epp
Mountain Lion Editor and Exterminator
S.D. Watch
Here is a link and online discussion of the lions roaming our area, including pictures of one ran over within 10 miles of our house:
http://www.ranchers.net/forum/about8476
Mtn. lions don't see humans as prey. That's nuts. If they did w.the confirmed kill numbers they'd extinct themselves. They eat a deer a week and various household cats which I consider a service to society.
One death in 1890 and another in 1909. For the next 77 years there were no fatal mountain lion attacks on humans. Since 1986 fifteen people have been killed.
Between 1991 and 2003 there were 73 actual attacks on humans which resulted in 10 deaths. Why the increase? The m lion population in 1971 in just California alone was estimated at 600, today it is thought to be about 6000.
I agree with PP that the population of the m lions need to be reduced to smaller numbers and held at those levels.
Mountain lions most assuredly DO consider humans to be prey. Check out this link:
http://www.southeasternoutdoors.com/wildlife/mammals/mountain-lion-attacks-fatal.html
You will see that there have been at least 20 confirmed cases of people who were killed by cougars since 1988 in the US and Canada and with the increase in the large predatory felines, that number is sure to grow.
Have to agree with you about the housecats though…
I hunt every year in the hills and at least 7-10 days in Colorado or Wyoming. Been doing so for over 10 years. I usually am out by myself all day, even, occasionally, laying down for a nap in the afternoon. Somehow, I continue to survive. I've seen tracks, never seen a cat. They are there, but they won't bother an adult unless their prey triggers are tripped.
Part of what makes the outdoors great is the things God has put in place. If you don't like cats, move out of the hills. If one is passing through on the prarie, fine. Don't like that? Move to Chicago.
I talked to an old hunter in his 70s years ago in Wyoming and he'd spent 30+ Septembers in the same hunting unit, never seeing a cat. Great respect for them though. This old guy couldn't fight off a house cat but I bet he'd fight PP tooth and nail if you tried to do anything to that which nature intended to be put in his place. As would I.
Maybe if we elect Jeb Bush we can just slash all the timber and just drill for oil everywhere. That will show them cats!
Correction - those cougar kills I posted are from 1890, not 1988.
“Maybe if we elect Jeb Bush we can just slash all the timber and just drill for oil everywhere. That will show them cats!”
This quote from you tells us all we need to know about where you are coming from. Tell me, have you started walking to work and building your houses from recycled trash?
And what are you thinking – shooting those poor defenseless game animals? For shame!!
Signed,
Republican hunter who hates to see "our" lands raped by industrialists (and farmers/rancher?) lining there pockets at my expense.
This is the most idiotic statement I’ve heard from any greenie-whacko for a long, long time!!
If it weren’t for the landowners who raise the public’s game animals at their own expense, you wouldn’t have any game to hunt. Nuts like you are easy to say no to when you come knocking on my door wanting to hunt my private land because you consider it your right.
A fine Republican you are. Is your name Tony Dean?
Yes, we should give you government guaranteed crop production, CRP payments, drought relief (oops, sorry, Thune is working on that), take breaks along w/an accounting system that guarantees you won't pay income tax, subsidies, deficiency payments, goverment easements paying you for doing what you already do, trees for 10c on the dollar, tariff protection, government purchasing of product that the market would bear, etc...etc...etc...the poor farmer/rancher. We should be buying out shi* from Brazil like McDonalds. They produce it cheaper. That's a Republican ideal!
Belle...are you Jim Lintz?
What do these crazy statements have to do with me having to raise the public’s game animals at my expense?
I would love it if the Dept. of Agriculture closed down tomorrow, the government got entirely out of my business, and you raised your game animals on your own lawn, not on the grass my cattle need to survive.
Republican ideal? What have you been smoking? You ARE Tony Dean, aren’t you!!! Are the Vote for Daschle signs still on your lawn?
And no, I’m not Jim Lintz, but I’m very proud to call him a friend.
You appear to be far to articulate to be a friend of Jim Lintz. Are you just making that up?