Deer, Puma Tracks, and Dead Rabbits

Posted on October 24, 2003 in Biomes Creatures Hiking Mountain Lions Neighborhood

Though many of them have small children, my neighbors have been philosophical about the mountain lion. As long as it sticks to chasing the deer, they say, they have no problem with it living right under our noses.

On the long walk that I took through Whiting Ranch Wilderness today, I saw only five puma tracks. Many more were the tracks of deer, bobcats, hikers, and mountain bikers.

My one wildlife encounter was with a mule deer who stood about seventy feet up a hill from me just as I came out of a grove of weighty oaks. I stood there, leaning my chin on the head of my staff, returning the deer’s stare for several minutes. Then I tipped my hat and moved on. (I do not know if it was a doe or a buck. Both sexes have antlers in different seasons and in the autumn, neither of them do.)

Enroute to this sighting, I came upon a park ranger who was deciding what to do with a dead rabbit. It had clearly been killed and chewed. Most of its right haunch and the cheek had been eaten away. She decided to move it into the bushes so that whoever we had disturbed in the devouring of this Western Cottontail could come back and finish the feast.

The ranger told me that she liked people up here. They picked up their trash and the trash of other people. They obeyed the park rules and did not fret about the proximity of mountain lions and other wild beasts. Previous to this she’d spent twelve years at Upper Newport Bay where the elite ran their dogs without stooping to pick up the shit or keep them out of nesting areas.

It’s not the poor who are costing us nature, but the wealthy.