Word: mountainous
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...cristiano, friend of the Christian--an odd name for a lion. That beneficent image was probably owing to Native American beliefs in the beast's role in maintaining harmony between heaven and humankind. The Chickasaw called the feline "the cat of God." And for centuries, puma concolor (a.k.a. mountain lion, cougar, panther, catamount) avoided people. It was an elusive presence: a tail vanishing into the bush, a distant snarl, the rare but startling...
Well, prepare to meet your maker. Suddenly it seems humans are encountering mountain lions from Texas to Canada. Just last week rangers took the rare step of closing down part of the 25,000-acre Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, 40 miles east of San Diego, so federal trackers and state game wardens could kill a mountain lion that stalked three hikers in recent days. At one point, the lion even swiped at one of them, but it missed. And it gets scarier than that. In May, Mary Jane Cooder was taking pictures during a walk in Big Bend National Park...
...July 31, a six-year-old camper was pulled from the jaws of a mountain lion by a 16-year-old counselor on a hiking trail near Missoula, Mont. The animal slunk away and was later tracked and killed; the child suffered puncture wounds and numerous scratches. In April, in Villa Park, Calif., which is about six miles east of Disneyland, a cougar climbed into a pine tree in Alice Thompson's backyard, leaped onto her front porch and nudged at the door before trying to jump a fence into a neighboring yard. Animal-control officials killed...
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...