Felis Concolor at Whiting Wilderness 4

Posted on March 11, 2004 in Hikes and Trails Mountain Lions Nature Neighborhood

My friend George joked that if we went ahead with a plan to hold a poetry reading at Whiting Ranch Wilderness, he’d bring along a copy of Blake and read The Tyger, ending with the cry “Please don’t eat us!”

Most people, including myself, expected that it would be some time before a new cat moved into our area.

My friend Donna, for example, comforted herself by saying that mountains lions are territorial, so it would take a couple of years before a new one moves into the region. I was inclined to agree.

On Tuesday, I went for a walk along the Sage Scrub Trail. There, preserved in the hardened mud along that mountain biker-eroded canyon, I saw a series of about ten tracks. A big cat had come up that steep path, using the trail as a sure route through the cactus, perhaps heading to the Upper Pond.

The bikers who joy-rided down the precipitous slope, following the rut laid out by too many predecessors, did not notice the sign peppering the left side of the trail. I called the rangers, raised a cairn, warned those I could. I continued my walk through Sleepy Hollow, stopping to take photos but only when I stood in a clearing and looked around first. I saw manroot blossoms; cardoon priming their artichoke grenades; the pink blossoms of lemonade sumac; scrub oak with galls that looked like late autumn’s apples; and a belligerant yellow escapee from the housing tract overlooking the Sage Scrub Trail that sent its rocket blooms flying from scatterings of olive-leaf-green foilage. And ten yards below the point where the Sleepy Hollow Trail rejoins Whiting Road, I saw another series of tracks on the left side, belonging to a smaller cat.

Population pressure must be such that the lions have wasted no time moving into good deer hunting grounds. They have filled the niche.

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Due to the popularity of this topic, I’ve added a “Mountain Lions” category.