Free Republic

Confronting Lion Was Breathtaking Experience. “I was walking this trail I had made, hunting for mushrooms, when I came across a deer carcass which hadn't been there before,” said Ron Olson... “I kind of looked around and didn't see anything. When I turned around, just to my left, there stood a mountain lion.” The lion sighting was officially confirmed Friday by officials from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. It is the state's first confirmed sighting in four years. About 90 minutes after they set up the camera, four shots were taken of the mountain lion eating on the carcass....

The video shot in Jack Foerschler’s barn shows his flock of sheep lying quietly in the dark... The flock seems peaceful, until the animals are suddenly startled. A nanosecond later, a blur leaps into the screen and tackles one of the sheep. The ewe is able to escape momentarily, jumping up from the creature’s clutches, running to the viewer’s left. But the invader is faster. It bounds to its feet and extends a claw toward its fleeing prey. The viewer can see its massive claws, slender muscular body and distinctively long tail. The culprit that killed four ewes, a ram...

RAPID CITY -- A Rapid City man says he was attacked by a mountain lion. Ryan Hughes says he was ice fishing Saturday at Sheridan Lake, and a lion jumped him as he left the ice and stepped into the woods. Hughes says the lion had a fresh kill in its mouth. Before he could react, Hughes says the big cat jumped on top of him, knocking him on his back. Hughes says he put his hands in front of his face and started kicking wildly. The lion retreated, but it left the man with deep gashes on his arm,...

NPR science reporter David Baron has a new book out, called "The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature." Baron's book is about the return of cougars to the Boulder, Colorado area after decades of hunting-induced absence, and their eventual taste for eating human beings — along with the various fantasy ideologies regarding wildlife and nature that this chain of events revealed. But, in light of the book's subtitle, I don't think it will be terribly unfair if I use this story as a, er, parable. For the story it tells is, at core, an old...