Lions on the Line Shack

Posted on October 6, 2004 in Hikes and Trails Mountain Lions

My first day back in Whiting Ranch Wilderness did not disappoint me. Though I saw no wildlife and plenty of trail bikers, my eyes scanning the ground and everything around me turned up deer tracks and the pawprints of two lions.

A mother and her cub have been spotted in these parts. She’s been taking her scion down to feast in the fields of Saddleback Church on the rabbits who breed joyfully there. The congregation will not touch the lions, but the rabbits have been declared the object of an eradication program. The meek shall be turned into lucky charms or rototilled into the earth.

The pair may have been coming back from those environs when they left their mark on the Line Shack Trail. I spotted the larger track of the mother first. It measured nearly four inches across. Then I noted the smaller tracks: too small to be from the same beast but too large to be either a bobcat or a domestic shorthair.

I followed the track for about two hundred feet. The latticed wheels of trail bikes erased the sign in a few places. The double-almonds of deer track bored deep into the earth offered the motive for the pair’s prowl. I stopped to photograph and circle the tracks for the rangers. Trail bikers hurried by, too intent on the wind running up their noses, the bumps and grooves of the trail shaking up their behinds into their spinal columns. They had no time for lions or anything else of nature. I shook my head and climbed back to the top of Portola Hills where I wrote a rant about those who do not take the time to know the ground on which they ride.