Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
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My Mountain Lion
Posted on January 11, 2004 in Mountain Lions Nature Neighborhood The Orange
I keep thinking back to October and then to the events of last Thursday. I remember that moment when the lion stood for half a second, two legs on the road, surprised in his charge; then the sight of his backside and from around the corner for several seconds, the dwindling pound of his flight.
The lion that killed the cyclist should have been shot. Perhaps this youngster who was shot by a Tribal Officer of the Pomo Indians deserved the same fate.
Part of me dreads, however. Was this my lion, the lion that I frightened off last October? The Orange County writers who have spoken up on the subject, so far, all agree that the lions should be left alone until they pose a menace to life. I agree. Even if it was my lion, I tearfully support the action that the California Department of Fish and Game took. I just ask like a disappointed father “How could he have been so stupid?”
A handful of people have sent me emails, left comments, or remarked to me on IRC channels in favor of bounties on lions. Mountain lion hunting remains legal in many states. The popular way to stalk them involves sending out a pack of hounds while the hunter sucks down beers in his Hummer and waits for them to tree the cat. The reason given for this is that the mountain lion is “a dangerous animal”. How many people, I ask, were killed in auto accidents here in California last Thursday? How many were shot and killed? How many were bitten by dogs?
It is pathetic and funny that the world’s most dangerous animal should rail against an endangered creature that exists on the fringe, in lands that we moved into.
