Terri is driving into Des Moines to a friends wedding reception today. Her traveling companions over the last 20 years are both going to be at Jevlin's brothers reception. The two Terri's and Jev have a lot of talking to catch-up on. Terri and Terri are both retired from the county and Jev worked with them until she moved to Arizona.
As we were sitting outside yesterday and I had the opportunity to get a professional opinion on the paw prints we crossed on Fridays hike.
Terri pointing at her find.
I had gone out on the web and identified the print as a cat. But which one was still in question. Bob Boweman a fellow square dancer and a hunter for more decades than I've been around was sitting outside tending to Pilot the wonder dog. I took my computer over to ask his opinion as to which cat it was? The options were Lynx, Bobcat or Cougar/Mountain Lion.
First he told me that Lynx was out because their territory was further North in the cascades. That narrowed the choices to Bobcat or Cougar.
Bob explained that although Bobcats are smaller than Cougars they had larger feet which allowed them to hunt in the snow. After a quick look at my photo Bob said, "It's a Cougar". He explained that a Cougar walks with it's claws retracted so they don't become dull and worn.
Bob's best words of wisdom were, "If the Cougar was nearby he would have heard us first and would have been long gone by the time we got anywhere near him."
I came back to the motorhome to tell Terri the good news. She was still not convinced and asked how many people had been killed by Cougars in this state? I was off to the web for an answer. A quick search of the states wildlife site produced the answer. One person in the last twenty years was killed. What I didn't tell Terri was that 9 people had been attacked.
I mean how bad could a cat scratch be?
We are headed back up to Salmon La Sac with the motorhome on Monday morning for a couple of days of camping in the National Park. I'm just going to sit around and rest today.
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