Did you say mountain lions?!

Pagey's_Girl

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According to one of the local news channels last night, there have been sightings of mountain lions about twenty miles southeast of where I live. Mind you, I live about sixty miles north of NYC. Look, I love nature as much as the next girl, but I prefer the kind that doesn't go for human hor d'erves.

(We also have coyotes now, and bears. If I see a tiger, I'm outta here....)
 

sheadakota

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LOL- don't come visit me- we have coyotes, bobcats, and bears - - OH MY!
 

Haggis

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A mountain lion? Are they sure? It sounds like George Steinbrenner to me.
 

dobiwon

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Things must be tough for mountain lions these days :)

There have been reports over the past two or three weeks of sightings of a mountain lion, as close as 1/2 mile to my house, and within the city limits of Richmond, VA. We're at least sixty miles from the mountains.

It's been seen near the site of one of the high schools and an elementary school (a frightening thought), and in some very affluent subdivisions near the school.

Deer are common, even in my back yard, as are foxes, but this is the first time anybody can remember seeing a mountain lion. Come to think of it, we've seen many more deer in the last few months than usual.

Hmm, do the animals know something we don't?
 

Appalachian Writer

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I'm not surprised. Here in the Appalachians, we're loaded with coyotes. There's even bounties on their heads in some counties. They've dessimated the rabbits and small game. Domestic cats disappear frequently and you can hear them howling in the night. During calving season, dairy and beef farmers lose hundreds of dollars. They're here because they've no other place to go. We're the closest thing to wildnerness that they know.
 

Pagey's_Girl

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A mountain lion? Are they sure? It sounds like George Steinbrenner to me.

:ROFL:

ETA - We have deer, too - they're the reason I can't have tulips in the garden - and wild turkeys and coyotes and all that. I even suspect a neighbor's dog might have treed a bear over in the other lot one night a couple of years ago - there was a lot of commotion and I could hear something very large and angry growling that didn't sound anything like another dog, but I was not going outside to see what was up. I've even seen bald eagles hanging around near the Hudson River lately. Now that's pretty cool.
 
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Darzian

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:ROFL:

ETA - We have deer, too - they're the reason I can't have tulips in the garden - and wild turkeys and coyotes and all that. I even suspect a neighbor's dog might have treed a bear over in the other lot one night a couple of years ago - there was a lot of commotion and I could hear something very large and angry growling that didn't sound anything like another dog, but I was not going outside to see what was up. I've even seen bald eagles hanging around near the Hudson River lately. Now that's pretty cool.

How much does it cost for an adult ticket to this zoo?
 

Pagey's_Girl

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How much does it cost for an adult ticket to this zoo?

All-inclusive with the airfare. :)

It's nice seeing so many creatures coming back, though. We even had three momma turkeys bringing their babies around this spring - about twenty little ones all told. They liked the seeds the other birds were dropping out of the birdfeeder.
 

James81

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I once saw a lion that had wings and fangs and horns and shit.

It was then that I knew that I had become a man.
 

lakotagirl

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My son has a Mastif. They live at the edge of a small town in northern Illinois. It's a rural area with lots of corn fields.

Anna is usually very good, but one night afer a rain, she wanted to run. She ran into a field behind their house and romped for over an hour.

The next day my son got home from work to find dozens of people in the field behind his house. He asked the neighbor what was going on and the neighbor told him that a mountain lion had been sighted the night before and they were tracking it and making casts of the tracks.

My son told them "Um... I think it was Anna."

They argued with him. Someone swore it was defintely a mountain lion. Someone else claimed to have seen it.

My son looked at the tracks and told them that they were dog tracks, not cat tracks.

To this day, SOME people believe that it was my "granddoggy", some are convinced that mountain lions live near us.

All that aside -- we own thirty acres that we try to keep wildlife friendly. We have lots of deer, turkey, pheasants, fox, and, yeah - coyotes (those bastards!). Several years ago we saw what we can only describe as a black panther. We found one print. It was a cat.

The animal we saw was huge and it was black. Was it a panther? Don't know for sure...

We've never seen it again - but several neighbors claim to have seen it since.

I'm not afraid to let the kids camp. This cat was running to get away from us. Coyotes don't come close (they know that we will shoot them).

The scariest experience I've ever had down there involved deer scaring the shit out of me... Oh, wait - once I ran into a human who didn't belong there. He was scary! I put the run on him pretty fast...
 

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My husband swears he saw a fox in our backyard the other day - we are semi rural but near an interstate in West-Central Jersey, about 12 miles from the Pa. border.

And we did have a black bear in our yard a few years back.
We also have the assorted deer, bunny rabbits, and groundhogs.
 

JLCwrites

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ETA - We have deer, too
And that is why there are lions nearby. :)



There isn't too much to worry about. Just don't go jogging by yourself in the woods. If they get overpopulated, you can call your local 'vegetarian' vampire to snack on a few.
 

Honalo

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Oh yeah! I saw a red fox on my way to work on day, too! It was my first fox sighting.

very strange for a fox to be so out in the open, I thought, in a residential area ...
but then it could also be that my husband's delusional - he grew up in a big city - I questioned whether he knew what a fox looked like and he swore ... so I have to believe. Maybe it was hunting for food?
 

Kitrianna

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Well the coyotes are easy to explain. Since humans have been hunting the North American wolf for so long, the wiley little dogs are taking over. I would hamper a guess that the mountain lions are just following their prey. This makes me so glad I moved into the city a couple months ago.
 

Stlight

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When people killed off the mountain lions they forgot about coyotes and deer. If I hear one more hunter explain how the deer need to be thinned and he is just saving them from starvation... But then they don't care for my lectures about mountain lions belonging where the deer are. It is my understanding that they perfer coyotes to people.

If the coyotes weren't there I guess people would be sounding Australian about the rabbits. Maybe not the Australians don't seem to understand that the dingos eat rabbits and cats kill mice and rats. (A snake quits killing mice when it's full so it's not much help.)

But I would keep my cats and small dogs in the house. Wait, I've always done that. The two males who wouldn't stay in the house were killed by ordinary dog packs. But we don't have mountian lions in the big city, though I saw a fox once in downtown Atlanta. It didn't look well, but that was the year they were poisoning pigeons. That didn't work - they kept flying into car windshields and a lot of pet cats bought it. They got hawks and retruned the balance to the city.

Now I live in the country, and it's even harder to avoid hunters.

Stlight

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ErylRavenwell

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According to one of the local news channels last night, there have been sightings of mountain lions about twenty miles southeast of where I live. Mind you, I live about sixty miles north of NYC. Look, I love nature as much as the next girl, but I prefer the kind that doesn't go for human hor d'erves.

(We also have coyotes now, and bears. If I see a tiger, I'm outta here....)

Wild tigers in North America? No chance, girl. Mountain Lions aren't really lions; they are cougars. And they weigh only about 50-60 kg on average. The only thing scary in the American wilderness is the Kodiak bear; they weigh about 500 kg! Not even a shotgun can stop them.
 

Stlight

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Well, a mama black bear with cubs can do a good bit of damage. For some reason I don't understand bears really seem to hate dogs. It isn't wise to leave your dog chained up where there are bears.

Badgers also can lay down some damage. The trick is to keep your hands away from them. I will admit that our badgers are nothing compared to honey badgers.

Stlight
 

Snowstorm

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Last winter one night, I sat in front a huge picture with my back to the window practicing my guitar. The snow had drifted to the bottom of the window. About every ten minutes I'd turn and look out at the lights across the road to see if any critter happened by under them. The room's light lit the snow drift and I'd glance at the drift to see if any little critter (like a weasel) ran by. Nope.

At the end of the evening I stood up for the last look before heading to bed, and cougar tracks were at the window!

Had I turned around, I would have seen it from four feet away.

My husband said it's too bad I didn't see it. I said it's a danged good thing I didn't see it. I really would have hurt myself getting away from that window!

It was a cougar too. The next morning we went outside and saw the tracks where a bobcat and the cougar had crossed paths. CLEAR distinction in size. Sure enough, the cougar had walked right past the window and heard me play. (Probably why it didn't stick around.)
 

Beach Bunny

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When I lived in Knoxville, it seemed like every winter there was a news report of a black bear getting in someone's hot tub up in Gatlinburg. :)