Word: cougars
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...from the starting line, they hurtle down the track, leaving shimmering waves of fumes. As they cross the finish line, twin giant billboards flash their time and speed and each racer gets a printed receipt with his (or, pretty rarely, her) time. Bob's personal record for his 1978 Cougar (" a little old-fashioned," he admits) is 12.5 seconds...
...recent weakness in the Canadian dollar, commonly called a loony, after the loon portrayed on the dollar coin. Coincidence? Or should the economists we send over to advise East European governments be supplanted by some zoologists? What if Belarus replaced the bunny with a silverback gorilla or a cougar? But does Belarus have any silverback-gorilla habitat? Suddenly, I threw down the paper. Since when did I have to start worrying about the stability of the Belarus bunny...
What's clear is that humans have expanded into habitat that was once the relatively exclusive domain of the cougar. "We're having more encounters because we're moving into their territory," says Lynn Sadler, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation, a national pro-cougar lobbying group based in Sacramento, Calif. "We are not only reducing the size of their available range but fragmenting it." She recalls a recent incident in Roseville, Calif., where a lion walked right through a brand-new apartment complex. The site straddled a natural pathway that lions used to travel between neighboring ranges. "There...
Steve Torres, an Arizona naturalist and the author of the book Mountain Lion Alert, has formulated some advice. Do not run from a lion--they recognize prey by flight. Yell and scream instead. Eye contact, too, establishes a threat to the cougar, or you may wave it away. Raise your arms to make yourself seem bigger than you actually are. If in a group, band together and pick up the children. If you are with pets, forget about them. Defend your children. And if the lion attacks, fight back, brandishing a threatening object--knife, branch, stick...
...done to prevent lions from roaming on property? Torres says anything that attracts deer increases the chances of mountain lion incursions. "Landscape your yard with native plants that do not attract deer," Torres advises. And don't leave garbage exposed. It attracts smaller animals, which is what a hungry cougar is looking...