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Catch a cougar by the tail

Dogs chase cats and dogs that chase cou­gars seem to be par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­ast­ic.  

One of the most fam­ous cou­gar hunters, former US pres­id­ent, Theodore Roosevelt, wrote about “dogs that climbed trees.” He said a blood­hound named Turk scrambled al­most nine metres (30 feet) up a pinyon tree be­fore plum­met­ing to the ground. And a half-breed bull­dog reg­u­larly went as high as six metres (20 feet) or more after cou­gars. Apparently, the branches broke the dogs’ falls as, no mat­ter how far they fell, they con­tin­ued to “climb trees.”  

Winston Vickers, as­so­ci­ate veter­in­ari­an at the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center, told me about a cou­gar that jumped out of a tree, landed in the middle of a pack of re­search track­ing hounds, grabbed a dog by the head and took off. Of course, all the oth­er hounds gave chase. One got close enough to grab the cou­gar by the tail. That was enough to make it drop the dog it was car­ry­ing. The dog sur­vived but wasn’t keen on track­ing cou­gars after that.  

But un­til re­cently, I’d nev­er heard of a dog catch­ing a cou­gar by the tail and go­ing up a tree. The foot­age on this short video clip is in­cred­ible. And yes, both the dog and cou­gar survived. 

Cougar running in snow.
Isn’t that tail just beg­ging to be pulled?
Photo cour­tesy California Fish and Game.

 

 

 

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Saw a cougar on the way to sell The Cougar

I picked Susan Ketchen up at 6:30 the morn­ing of August 2. The car was loaded with chairs, cool­ers filled with snacks and boxes of books. We were headed to Telegraph Cove Resort on the north­ern end of Vancouver Island to par­ti­cip­ate in their an­nu­al out­door mar­ket. Susan had cop­ies of her Born That Way series to sell and I had a box of my latest book, The Cougar: Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous.

Coming around a corner a little ways past Nimpkish Lake, I slowed as a deer was cross­ing the road ahead. Only it didn’t have long, skinny legs and wasn’t the right shape. It moved like a bear but wasn’t black. And then, as its hind end be­came the pre­dom­in­ant view, we saw the tail and shouted, “It’s a cougar!”

It was HUGE and just lan­guidly walk­ing across the pave­ment, not in any hurry and not at all con­cerned about the ap­proach­ing car. In fact, it nev­er even glanced at us. We had time to watch the big paws strike the as­phalt, ob­serve the red­dish tan fur and the su­per long tail with its dis­tinct­ive black tip. And then – poof! It dis­ap­peared into a thin rim of bush along­side a clear­cut. We were on a cou­gar high all day!

Due to its size and cas­u­al swag­ger, we think it was a ma­ture male. And strangely, the only cou­gar my part­ner, Rick, has seen in the wild, was spot­ted not too far away about 20 years ago. He said that cat was also enorm­ous and that the grace and speed of it run­ning across the road in two bounds and then ef­fort­lessly leap­ing up a nine metre bank was incredible.

This isn't the cougar Susan and I saw - our cougar was larger! Image courtesy Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
This is­n’t the cou­gar Susan and I saw — our cou­gar was lar­ger!
Image cour­tesy Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

Although the time span makes it im­possible that Rick and I saw the same cou­gar, it’s pos­sible my sight­ing was the son or grand­son of the one he saw. Either way, there’s no doubt that area is ex­cel­lent cou­gar habitat.

And I won­der how many au­thors that have writ­ten books about cou­gars have seen one on the way to sell their book?

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The Cougar wins gold!

I’d for­got­ten about the Foreword Review’s IndieFab Nature Book of the Year nom­in­a­tion so was caught totally off guard when The Cougar re­ceived the gold award!

As al­ways, I’m so grate­ful for the sup­port and great work  done by my pub­lish­er, Douglas & McIntyre and to all the people who so gen­er­ously con­trib­uted their know­ledge, ex­per­i­ences and pho­to­graphs. The book would­n’t ex­ist without them.

Renee Andor wrote a great art­icle about The Cougar’s win in the Comox Valley Record.

 

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Cougars in urban areas

It’s un­be­liev­able how stealthy and quiet cou­gars are. And how of­ten they can be near hu­mans – on trails or even in urb­an areas – without any­one noticing.

Visit here to view im­ages and a video clip of a cou­gar cas­u­ally strolling the streets of a res­id­en­tial area in south­ern California.

As well as be­ing si­lent, cou­gars can re­main still for hours. Scroll down to the third and fourth pho­tos at this site to see the spot where the cou­gar known as 46m hid on a busy street in the San Francisco Bay area for six hours. Despite hun­dreds of people walk­ing, bik­ing and driv­ing by, no one knew a cou­gar was in the bushes un­til 46m de­cided to make a run for it.

And it doesn’t only hap­pen in California. In 1992, a four-year old, 60 kilo­gram cou­gar was tran­quil­ized and re­moved from the un­der­ground park­ing gar­age of the Empress Hotel in down­town Victoria, BC.

hidden cougarThis photo by Jessie Dickson shows just how well a cou­gar can blend in.