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The Cougar shortlisted for two awards!

I’m so ex­cited! And none of it would have happened without all the hard work, en­ergy and or­gan­iz­a­tion of the staff at Douglas & McIntyre. The D&M/Harbour pub­lish­ing team are ab­so­lutely the best!

Here’s the press re­lease my pub­li­cist, Heather Lohnes, sent out March 13: 

Paula Wild’s The Cougar Receives Two Award Nominations in Two Days

     Author Paula Wild’s BC best­selling book The Cougar: Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous (Douglas & McIntyre; $34.95) has been nom­in­ated for two awards in as many days. Just yes­ter­day, the BC Book Prizes an­nounced that The Cougar is a fi­nal­ist for their 2014 Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award. And today, Foreword Reviews has an­nounced it as a fi­nal­ist for their 2013 Book of the Year Awards, in the cat­egory of Nonfiction – Nature.

The Cougar blends nat­ur­al his­tory, sci­entif­ic re­search, First Nations stor­ies and first-per­son ac­counts to ex­plore our evolving re­la­tion­ship with the power­ful and in­triguing pred­at­or called cou­gar, puma, moun­tain lion, and ap­prox­im­ately forty oth­er names. It also in­cludes amaz­ing pho­to­graphs and up-to-date in­form­a­tion on cou­gar aware­ness and de­fense tac­tics for those liv­ing, work­ing or trav­el­ling in cou­gar coun­try. Throughout, au­thor Paula Wild delves into what makes this an­im­al that both fas­cin­ates and fright­ens us so beau­ti­ful, so dan­ger­ous, and why cou­gars re­main an im­port­ant and valu­able part of our environment.

Paula Wild is the au­thor of sev­er­al oth­er books, in­clud­ing One River, Two Cultures, The Comox Valley and Sointula: Island Utopia, win­ner of a B.C. Historical Federation Certificate of Merit. She has also writ­ten for nu­mer­ous peri­od­ic­als, in­clud­ing Beautiful British Columbia, Reader’s Digest and Canada’s History Magazine. She lives in Courtenay, BC.

The BC Book Prizes’ Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award, sup­por­ted by the BC Booksellers’ Association, is presen­ted to the pub­lish­er and the au­thor of the book that is most suc­cess­ful in terms of pub­lic ap­peal, ini­ti­at­ive, design, pro­duc­tion and con­tent. The win­ner will be an­nounced at the 30th Annual Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala in Vancouver on May 3, 2014. For more in­form­a­tion on this award, vis­it www​.bcbook​prizes​.ca.

The Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Awards cel­eb­rate new in­die books from au­thors and pub­lish­ers whose work stands out from the crowd, with awards in over sixty cat­egor­ies. The win­ners of the 16th Annual Book of the Year Awards will be cel­eb­rated at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Las Vegas on June 27, 2014. For more in­form­a­tion on this award, vis­it www​.botya​.fore​wordre​views​.com.

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Cougar chasing monkey in tree for food…or fun?

Cougars are hard-wired to kill, that’s how they sur­vive. But do they al­ways chase prey be­cause they’re hungry? No one knows for sure.

There are in­stances where cou­gars chose to tackle large prey such as a buck elk even when smal­ler an­im­als are read­ily ac­cess­ible. Biologist and cou­gar safety ex­pert, Dave Eyer, spec­u­lates this might be be­cause some cou­gars like a big chal­lenge even when no one’s around to applaud.

I’ll take that one step fur­ther and sug­gest that some­times cou­gars chase prey for prac­tise or for the sheer pleas­ure of the pur­suit. Of course, if they catch what they’re after, they’ll kill and eat it.

Take a look at these pho­tos of a cou­gar chas­ing a howl­er money through the trees in Costa Rica and see what you think.

 

 

 

 

 

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Cougar leaping fence

Cougars are built for short-term speed, agil­ity and strength. Their skelet­al struc­ture is held to­geth­er by muscle more than lig­a­ments, which makes them in­cred­ibly flexible.

Much of the big cat’s strength is found in their power­ful rear legs, which can pro­pel them five metres straight up from a stand­still and 14 metres ho­ri­zont­ally onto the back of their prey.

To view an ex­ample of a cou­gar ef­fort­less jump­ing, watch this short trail cam­era clip. Note how the cou­gar by­passes the lower part of the fence to eas­ily bound over as two metre high section.

 

Can you see this cougar peeking over the backyard fence? Jumping over it would be as easy as for the big cat as blinking an eye.
Can you see this cou­gar peek­ing over the back­yard fence? Jumping over it would be as easy as for the big cat as blink­ing an eye.

 

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Wild female cougar adopts orphaned cubs

Cougar cubs lead pre­cari­ous lives. Other pred­at­ors – even male cou­gars — prey on them. They can also be­come sick or get in­jured. But per­haps the worst thing that can hap­pen is los­ing their mom.

This three-week old cougar kitten was photographed in southern California by Eric York while working for UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.
This three-week old cou­gar kit­ten was pho­to­graphed in south­ern California by Eric York while work­ing for UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.

Most young adult cou­gars head out on their own when they’re 18-months to two-years old. By that time they have rudi­ment­ary hunt­ing skills and are usu­ally large enough to take down prey on their own. Even then some young cou­gars don’t survive.

But if mom is shot by a hunter, hit by a car or killed tak­ing down prey when her cubs are young­er than 18-months old, their chances of sur­viv­al de­crease dramatically.

Cougars are se­cret­ive car­ni­vores so much about their day-to-day lives and re­la­tion­ships with each oth­er re­mains un­known. So it was a real sur­prise when re­search­ers with Panthera’s Teton Cougar Project in Jackson Hole, Wyoming dis­covered a fe­male cou­gar with young of her own had ad­op­ted three orphaned cubs.

Teton Cougar Project dir­ect­or, Howard Quigley, tells the story in New Insight into Cougar Behaviour.