Back when Alex, my youngest son, was a senior in high school he took his friend Peter out to the river winter camping. It was Peter’s first experience sleeping in the out-of-doors and he was doing so in January and without a tent.

It was about 2:30 a.m. when I got the phone call. Every parent in the world knows the gut-dropping feeling when the phone rings at 2:30 a.m. I answered and it was Alex. “Dad, do we have mountain lions here in Gothenburg?” I was at first relieved that there wasn’t something wrong, and then I got mad. “You’re calling me at 2:30 in the morning to ask if we have mountain lions? What the…” “Dad, I think we are looking at one! We have the flashlight on it and it is hissing at us.” I wasn’t mad anymore, I was jealous. “Well, it could be. There has been a mountain lion sighted in the area where you guys are camping.” At the time we had two dogs, a Chesapeake named Minnie that was about 90 lbs and a smaller beagle named Lilly. I asked Alex, “Is it Minnie size or Lilly size?” “It’s bigger than Minnie and it’s whipping its tail back and forth and it is still hissing at us.” Yep, they were looking at a mountain lion.

Where the boys were camping was along a walking trail that ran through the trees from one end of the 96 Ranch to the other. A number of individuals, including myself, would regularly walk or run that trail alone, many times at sundown which is when the large cats become active. There was a small concern as to what to do if a mountain lion appeared. You can’t outrun them, but then you probably don’t have to, as they are generally very shy. Two stories about how shy they are come from the same mountain lion and a couple of my co-workers at the time.

Chad drove up on a dead buck deer. When he stopped the 4-wheeler a mountain lion that was feeding on the deer jumped up and ran off. Chad called me and we inspected the deer. It had long scratches from its face down its neck. The scratches were deep and wider than my hand. Two days later Kent was working in the same area and came around a patch of cattails and was face to face with the animal. The cat took off. Kent said he was close enough to positively identify it as a male!

Alex asked me what they should do. I told them to get out of their sleeping bags, stand up and be as big as they could be, wave their arms and yell at the cat. It worked. The cat took off. The next morning when the boys came back to town I asked them to tell me all about the incident. After telling me the cat ran off, I asked, “What did you do then?”. Alex said that he went to the pickup and got the shotgun, loaded it, and they got back into their sleeping bags with the gun between them. Neither boy got much sleep that night. I told Alex that I was more concerned about them sleeping with a loaded shotgun next to them than their being attacked by a mountain lion!

Next week I’ll talk more about the big cats.