Cougars

Cougars, Mountain Lions, Panthers, Puma - they're all the same thing, just different names. They, like most apex predators, are maligned and hunted.

I was just reading today about a Mountain Lion called P-22, who lived in Griffith Park in southern California. He wandered through the park and on the streets of Hollywood for 10 years. He wore a tracking collar, and provided so much data about the activities of male Mountain Lions - most of it involved minding his own business.

See some P-22 footage here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/901397757971206

He was humanely euthanized in 2022, after being hit by a car. If that had been the only problem, he'd probably still be alive, but he, like our domestic kitties, had a number of problems. He had kidney disease; he had rat poison in his system (from eating rodents who had ingested the poison); he had serious arthritis. Instead of weighing the usual 125 lbs, he was only 90 lbs when he was captured. He was having trouble hunting.

And yet this being had coexisted in an urban environment for 10 years! People loved him. They knew enough to let him be a wild thing, but they admired him from afar and so many security cameras had pictures of him strolling by. Apparently he kept the coyotes out of the neighborhoods, too - after he passed, the coyotes, according to one person, came back in force.

Despite a lack of good wild habitat, and having to cross roads and sometimes look in trash bins to survive, he did pretty well. But it's too bad it had to be that way. He was WILD. 

It would have been better if he hadn't had to put up with us humans. Here's a statistic for you - the percentage of mammals on the planet who are wild is only 4-6%. Cattle, pigs, etc. make up 60-62%, and we humans make up 34-36%. I see a little imbalance there - how about you?

Chief Seattle said this: ‘If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth.’