Posted on 06/12/2007 5:40:06 AM PDT by BGHater
A Bayside woman hearing a commotion on her porch Wednesday looked out the window to see the tail of her cat dangling from the mouth of a mountain lion.
“I heard a loud noise and went to the side door, and I saw what I thought was a tan dog trying to get something in his mouth,” said Kathleen Essa, a resident of Brookwood Drive, which is located off Jacoby Creek Road.
“Then the animal turned around, and I saw it was kind of long, with a long tail, and I saw a long black tail hanging out of its mouth,” she said.
“I knew instantly that was our cat.”
Essa said losing Prince, an approximately 12-year-old male cat she’d rescued when he was a kitten, was like losing a member of the family.
“He had been hit by a car, and he only had three legs. I shouldn’t have favorites — I have two other cats — but he was kind of my favorite.”
But it’s not just the loss of the cat that troubles her.
“What was so terrible about it is that the mountain lion came right up against our door to get the cat,” she said. “We’re really concerned about it. We don’t go outside anymore.”
Essa said she has a 6-year-old child, and her husband was working elsewhere in the yard at the time of the attack.
Wildlife biologist Jeff Dayton from the California Department of Fish and Game said sharing the land with mountain lions “is part of the luxury of living in places like Bayside.”
“The area has a pretty healthy deer population, and anywhere we have deer, we have mountain lions not far away,” Dayton said.
“I would say it’s pretty rare that we have mountain lions that are house-cat hunters, but they are opportunistic predators,” he said, naming raccoons, foxes, skunks and possums as other mammals of choice.
The cat attack at the Essa residence occurred around dusk, which Dayton said is prime hunting time for the big cats.
The best thing residents can do is try to minimize risks and liabilities, he said.
“Residents should have a kind of common-sense awareness that I do live in mountain lion country. My family lives in mountain lion country. My pets and livestock live in mountain lion country.”
Domestic animals should be secured at night, Dayton said, and he recommended not leaving pet food outside because it attracts other animals of interest to mountain lions.
He also noted that male mountain lions in particular have a very large home range — anywhere from 25 to 100 square miles.
“So a lion seen in Bayside one day may be in Freshwater the next.”
Essa said a depredation order had been issued to have the mountain lion killed, but a tracker was unable to locate the cat.
"Come to Bayside. Live in peace and harmony with the big animals.
Disclaimer: Small pets at risk, esp. at dawn and dusk."
...it’s even the key ingredient in Indiana’s Official State Casserole.
Illinois is behind-the-times here. ;-)
I just LOVE to see nature in action...
I’d prefer a fine chianti, with some Fava beans on the side.
I’d prefer a fine chianti, with some Fava beans on the side.
I’d prefer a fine chianti, with some Fava beans on the side.
Is hunting allowed?
W
“If she had shaved her cat ...”
...then she’d have a, uh, she’d have a .... never mind.
We have two large German shepherds think cats who enter our fenced yard are toys. Unfortunately not very durable toys. They have never actually eaten them though.
Goes to show that Mountain Lions aren’t all bad.
Outside the city limits. These were inside the city.
The trapper had a trap set on my place here in Eureka for a problem bear. He told me he had trapped 7 lions in the Bayside to Arcata area in the last 3 years. He also traps lions on the sheep ranches in Humboldt county and had trapped 2 on the day before he came to my place.
The best thing the residents could do would be to move back to the city where people live and let the mountain lions have someplace to live, too.
Now .... for the $64,000 question. Do you know what GenCon is? (referenced in a post at that Indiana page).
MMM, yes. Here in Alaska, families who live in the villages often can’t let their children out to play because there are wolf packs in the area and animal protection zealots frown on shooting wolves. Wolves have been known to carry off small children and make a prolonged meal out of them.
Send hubby out with a rifle, night vision goggles and 20 pounds of meat for bait.
Oh man, I hate to admit it, but that was a good one! :P
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