Networking the West with Liz Ryan
Man Shoots Cougar Eating His Dog, May Face Charges
By Liz Ryan, 10-09-07
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The Daily Camera reports that a man living with his family in a trailer near Nederland found a cougar with his puppy in its jaws, and shot it, killing the cat. He may face charges, because the law only allows you to kill a mountain lion when it’s threatening you or your livestock. The law isn’t clear on whether a dog is livestock.
Now, here is a USA Today story reporting that booming cougar populations are causing the big cats to move Eastward, where they’ve been spotted in Michigan, Ilinois and Missouri, among other unlikely spots. And here is a report from the Cougar Network, showing the animals’ expanded range and noting that modern cougar populations may be larger than they were at the time of the arrival of European settlers.
So, there are a lot of these cats around. I saw one on my block a week ago, and it wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of me. I live in Boulder proper, a 1/2 mile from the CU campus and the Baseline/Broadway intersection. The cat hung around for twenty minutes before leaving the road, looking, as my ninth-grader commented, “Like butter wouldn’t melt.”
You can fine a guy, or put him in jail, or force him to wear a vest and clean up the litter in the middle of Canyon Boulevard when he shoots a cat. But the dog was in the lion’s mouth, for Pete’s sakes. You can say “don’t leave your dog outside at night.” But dogs will go out at night, at least mine always want to, because they need to pee.
We have too many lions. We can’t relocate them because no one else wants them, either. We can rage against people who leave dogs and little horses outside, but what good will that do? I talked with a Wildlife Control officer from the City of Boulder. His department doesn’t deal with mountain lions, but he shared his opinion anyway. “Once they’re not afraid of people, they’re dangerous,” he said. That would be a sensible view.
When I called the Department of Wildlife about the lion on our street - and yes, I called, because I’m not taking responsibility for somebody else’s dog or kid being eaten—no one came. Evidently the DOW guys work during the day and are on call during the evening. No one wants to come out to investigate. That’s okay by me. I went in the house.
Clearly we have a problem. All the shouts of “they were here first” aren’t helping any lion, dog or human being. I’ve lost confidence in the DOW, and if they press charges against the man who shot that lion—a guy from Wisconsin—that won’t help any living thing either. Supposedly four hundred mountain lions are killed by hunters every year in Colorado. Yet the lion population is bigger than ever.
And lions are in Illinois, and in Michigan, on the shores of the Great Lakes.
One thing is for sure. When a lion gets killed in Boulder County, somebody is to blame. Somebody’s getting tarred and feathered. Could be this man from Wisconsin who left his dog outside overnight. The town, evidently, didn’t fill him in on the fact that a lion had been making off with Nederland dogs for some time. I’m still wondering who was at fault when a first-grader got mauled a year ago Easter on Flagstaff. The kid? His parents, for thinking they could take a walk and look around? Here in Boulder, a lion is in trouble, a human’s got to pay. Something is broken.
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Comments
I understand it is Sinapu that is pushing trying to get the guy drawn and hung for daring to shoot the mountain lion in his yard.
Now I think the reason charges may be filed has more to do with Christmas than anything else. The person who killed Sandy Paws has to swing for the deed.
Yesterday it was a sharp shinned hawk with the cedar waxwing he was eating. He sat on a row end post, and glared at me. He was going to eat, and I was not going to bother him. I have had a sharpshinned use me for a flushing dog. As I drive the tractor spraying foliar fertilizer, I flush robins eating windfall fruit, and the hawk will fly under the trellis wire through several rows and make a turn right in front of the tractor and hit a robin in an explosion of feathers. The hawk knows the bird is in front of the tractor, and he cannot possibly see it through 5 or more rows of fully leafed out blueberries. And he comes through the rows and makes that turn down the clear row right on the bird. It is an incredible feat of flying and a wonderfully efficent act of predation.
The predators are living with us, whether we like them or not. I sort of like seeing the ones I now see, because that means the big cat is not around any more. He lived across the 4 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic going 65 miles an hour, and evidently either got killed and I didn't see his body, or he is staying put now. Since the traffic has gotten so bad, I no longer see deer on the farm, even with a fine and protected riparian zone along the creek. There we two yearlings one spring ago, but the cars got them before summer was out. Perhaps the big cat could not compete with cars and trucks, or those mechanical predators killed off his food supply. I did see a single elk track last spring. Out migrating young bulls come through occasionally now that no logging to make feed grounds happens in the National Forest, and all the logged land from yesteryear is overstocked with unthinned trees, letting in no sunlight for grass. The CCC boys planted all the meadows, fens, you name it, with trees during the makework days of the Great Depression. The elk have moved from the public forest to the private farmlands, only because groceries are more available and private land has much more security cover. I think that is why the big cat was around. There is a small new herd among the McMansions, christmas tree farms and vineyards across blood alley and to the north. They are hanging out on the Federal goose refuge now that the USFWS is underburning their forest lands to recreate the Indian savannahs the first settlers farmed or let go to trees.
There is nothing static about nature, and nature without the hand of man is not kind to many of the charismatic animals people associate with that very unatural condition called wilderness. I was spraying away at those invasive Himalyan blackberries, and thinking that any Montana grizzly would be in heaven with all these blackberries still on the vine, and the late blueberries the waxwings and robins are eating, and salmon splashing in the stream. And what a rodeo that would be each year trying to farm and keep out of a grizzly's way. That we have yet to have a black bear in the fields is a miracle. Maybe I should go out some night and just see who is around when the lights go out. I have one of those million candle power deer calls I can plug into the atv socket. A little 40 acres of farm and woodlands can produce some real surprises. I love them all.