Gotta Be Careful Out There

Cougars are being caught on trail cams all over.

The usual places and some not so usual ones.

This morning there are more posts about cougars being seen near Sodaville and a comment on the post stated one was seen in Waterloo at 4:45 a.m.  I'm trying to find out where in Waterloo.  Not that it really matters.  They've got large ranges.  They're seen more often now cause everyone seems to have their security cameras and their game cams out.  Game cam photography is now in itself a passion and hobby many have taken up.

I have to keep track of these things as best I can. At least I feel I should be keeping track.  I'm often out in the night trapping, alone, smelling like a can of cat food or tuna.  A cougar might smell me from half mile away.

A cougar was seen forty feet from where I've been taking cats out of Sodaville.  Two kittens were cornered there and killed by something but likely not a cougar.

It's a big world and an encounter isn't likely.  That's what they say.  And yet in my life, one human, I've run into them a number of times.  They say there are way too many cougars in Oregon but when they hunted down the one that killed that hiker near Zigzag, their game cams placed all over that side of the mountain only saw the one that they then killed.  It was a female, healthy, and had not a litter for years, they said.  So you wonder, are there really that many?   Since they have such huge ranges game cams on properties and in back yards can catch the same cougar all over an area in the same fricking night.

I suppose the scariest encounter I had was out beyond Cheshire, when removing some cats I'd gotten fixed before.  Property was empty by this time and remote, periodically being built upon.  I was tired, too tired, and already something had messed with my trap and drug it 10 feet through the brush.   There's really only one animal that would do that.  I knew it but my sleepiness had overwhelmed me.  I'd sat against a big tree, and fallen asleep.

I woke to what I thought was jake brakes, from a truck on the highway.  It was not jake brakes.  It was rumbling harsh growls of a cougar a few dozen feet from me down the driveway.  I'd felt safe enough there, since across the road there was a farm with goats and chickens.  If I were a hungry cougar, I'd be over there, not over here, toying with a human.   But cats are cats and they're curious and they get in trouble that way and this one probably even sniffed me while I slept, leaning against that fir tree.

I didn't move a single muscle.  The cougar vanished into the darkness.   I scrambled to my feet and got in my car.

I need to remember these encounters, I tell myself, that I've had and stop being so distracted and forgetful there are other animals out there in the woods when I'm trapping.  When I get tired I'm not as alert.  I'll try to be more alert.

It's just animals being animals, like humans, and they eat other animals too, like most humans do.  Cougars are way bigger and stronger than I am.  I would not stand a chance if one decided I was a threat or a meal, smelling the way I usually do, of cat food.   I don't waste one moment worrying over it though.

Do surfers quite surfing because there are sharks beneath the water?  Nah.

Hunting season does scare me out of the woods though.  Too many bad hunters who just aim at movement or hunt drunk or while popping pills.

There are lots of dangers all of us face every single day.   Car accidents kill so many people in Oregon.  Now there's some strange disease causing polio like symptoms in kids who get certain cold viruses and their systems react to the virus in a certain way.  Five kids in WA state just got hospitalized with it.  Some recover mostly and some die.  That has to frighten parents.

An Arizona hiker just died up around Mt. Hood, probably of hypothermia.  His hiking partner left him, a mile from the lodge, too slow I guess, guy wanted to rest up a bit, friend took off leaving him.  He never made it back.  Took a wrong turn, ended up halfway up the mountain and dead.  Days before they found him.  His friend didn't even report him missing til he hadn't heard from him for nine hours.  You don't want that kind of hiking buddy.

Who'd think, a couple day hiking trip, in the fall, weather hasn't really turned too bad yet, and one of you ends up dead as a result.  I've hiked with speedsters before.  It's no fun.  They race ahead then you come upon them sitting on a log, looking annoyed you're so slow, then you get about ten feet from them and off they go again.  I hate hiking with people like that.

 I'm just babbling this morning.  For no reason.  Gonna be a beautiful day too.  Can't wait.