In other news

Baby mountain lion in the Santa Monica Mountains. Photo by the good folks of the National Park Service.

Three words: Radioactive. wild. boars.

"When I write to tell you to go outside and experience nature, I am writing inside and you are reading inside and neither of us is outside experiencing nature." True dat.

Mountain lions of the Santa Monica Mountains. Great overview by Gary Valle [H/T CougarMagic]. On second thought, maybe I'll stay inside. [Near midnight here in the San Bernardino National Forest. Plus: radioactive wild boars.] The cuteness! [And oh, the humanity.]

Oklahoma Pre-wash Cycle. Awww.

And finally: Goodbye, Snaffles. Splendid and deeply moving eulogy for a wise, wonderful horse.

Why are bear cubs so adorable?

Dunno. They just are. I wuv them.

Now that the snow is melting, wildlife is popping up all over the SoCal nightly news reports: bears, mountain lions [see links below] and what-do-you-mean-this-isn't-New-Mexico far-ranging birds. [Shout-out to fellow birder S-, who photographed a Greater Pewee — is that an oxymoron? — up at Arrastre Creek today in the San Bernardinos. Since 1900 only a dozen or so of these Central American flycatchers have been spotted in California, according to the latest eBird stats. Darn day job... I'll get you anyway, Pewee!]

Topic. Bear cub adorableness:





Local mountain lion link fest:
"Just feet from my front door"
This just in: Wild animals live here
Woman survives mountain lion scare
Staring down nature's nose

I am so buying a bunch of these

This decal will look great on the truck's rear window. And on the fridge at the cabin, and on my laptop, and in the classroom ... Purchasing info here.

Mountain lion in your driveway? Bear in the barn? Hippies in the hot springs? Who ya gonna call? Around here, it's usually senior wildlife biologist Kevin Brennan of the California Department of Fish and Game. Here's Kevin carrying a drowsy young mountain lion away from a local elementary school:


Fish and Game Wardens and wildlife biologists in California do incredibly important work, and these days the department they work for needs public support more than ever. Consider:

California's game wardens protect wildlife and public resources and enforce hunting and fishing regulations. But warden numbers have been depleted by attrition.

Today there are about 210 field-level game wardens to patrol the state, recognized as the lowest ratio of wardens to population of any North American state or province.

Money from the special stamps will pay for training and equipment for game wardens. The stamp comes in the form of a sticker that can be affixed to a car window. Anyone can purchase a stamp; it does not have to be purchased with a hunting or fishing license. [Source]

As if budget cuts weren't bad enough, the California Department of Fish and Game is reeling from the tragic loss of three biologists and a pilot who were killed in a helicopter crash last week. [A memorial fund has been established, and this article tells how to make a donation.]

Times are tough indeed for the good people who protect so much:
* more than 1,000 native fish and wildlife species, 6,300 native plant species and 360 threatened or endangered species
* California's 159,000 square miles of land (414 square miles per warden)
* 1,100 miles of coastline, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, 4,800 lakes and reservoirs and 80 major rivers

And with the lowest ratio of wardens to population in North America! Buying a bunch of stickers is the least I can do to show my thanks. That, and a new sidebar link: it should be just a few inches to the right.

"Smack dab in the middle of lion country"

"Receptionist Emily Ransom, right, points to the injuries Hogie received after being attacked by a mountain lion [...] Hogie protected his owner, William Morse, while walking at Falcon Campground in Santa Ana Mountains, Calif. Tuesday. He was taken to Clinton Keith Veterinary Hospital in Wildomar, Calif. and received about 40 stitches." [Photo by Cheryl A. Guerrero for the Orange County Register.]

Hero to zero for Hogie, the lab mix injured by a mountain lion mere miles from my cousin's home in Orange County. OMG!

Original reports described a courageous dog defending his owners against an attacking lion, yay Hogie! Updates describe an [illegally] off-leash dog harassing wildlife in the Cleveland National Forest. Ruh roh. Bad owner - bad! From the O.C. Register:

State Fish and Game authorities called off the hunt for a mountain lion Tuesday night after a Wildomar man whose dog was injured by the lion revealed that the cat likely acted in self-defense.

“It doesn’t look like the lion was interested in the dog as a meal,” said Fish and Game Lt. Dan Sforza. “It was just defending itself. We have a policy to determine if this is a public safety threat and I am not classifying it as that.”

The incident happened around noon Tuesday. William and Candy Morse had been camping at El Cariso Campground. They went for a hike on a trail at Falcon Campground, next to Blue Jay Campground north of Ortega Highway. The campground was closed, but the couple hopped the chain. They were walking near the restroom area with their 5-year-old Queensland Heeler/Labrador mix Hoggie.

Morse, 41, was ahead of his wife when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mountain lion crouching near the restroom, about 40 feet ahead.

Hoggie jumped between Morse and the mountain lion, which Morse estimated at double the dog’s size.

According to Sforza’s interpretation of Morse’s account, both animals seem to have spotted each other at the same time. The lion started to run off and Hoggie ran after it. Then, Sforza said, it appears the lion turned back and attacked the dog, grabbing him by his underbelly and ripping him open.

And from the Press Enterprise:

Biologist Kevin Brennan of the California Department Fish and Game, said Fish and Game officials are not searching today for the mountain lion, which was estimated to weigh about 100 pounds, because they do not consider the confrontation "a public safety situation."

"The dog had attacked the mountain lion," Brennan said today.

Brennan, though, added that "when mountain lions are a public safety threat, we have no choice but to destroy the offending animal."

Lucky Hogie is expected to recover from his injuries.

See also -
Mountain lion posts: let me show you them.

In related news, we have bears. [Image from FFFFOUND!]

Of plague, a mountain lion, and an unlucky biologist

Not the plague cat: Shelby County's Mountain Lion. [Gloves, people! Protective respirators!]

And I thought dead rattlesnakes were the only things that could smite me from beyond the grave.

A wildlife biologist who was never trained about disease risks he could encounter while on the job died from the plague after handling a deceased lion without protective gear, according to a federal report.

The report [completed in May; released 19 Nov. 2008] by a National Park Service review board said Eric York, 37, didn't wear gloves or a protective respirator in October 2007 while handling and performing a necropsy on a mountain lion that had died of the plague.

Read the whole sad story here. York was involved in a mountain lion collaring program in Grand Canyon National Park and became ill after recovering the body of a collared lion.

An average of 10 to 15 persons are infected with plague in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC. The disease is usually associated with infected rats and rat fleas that live in the home, and is more common in rural areas: "in the United States, the last urban plague epidemic occurred in Los Angeles in 1924-25." [Yes, L.A. was urban then: 576,673 inhabitants in 1920.] Diamond Bar, an area threatened by the recent fires here in SoCal, suffered a plague outbreak in the 1970s. The Diamond Bar outbreak was traced to ground squirrels, the usual plague suspects in Southern California. But a fatal case of plague from handling a mountain lion...? Unheard of — until now.

Further reading:

CDC Plague Home Page

World Health Organization: Plague Fact Sheet

MedlinePlus Encyclopedia: Plague

Note to self: when collecting road kill specimens for county museum, remember to wear gloves.

H/T: Wildfire Today.

Mountain lion, er... "mountain lion" updates

Did I tell you about that time a mountain lion fell through the window? Yeah, I did. On the left, a cub on a front porch in Ventura, CA, from Flickr.

I am so using the hot new "a mountain lion attacked me" excuse the next time I get scratched up on a hike. Let's face it, "I tripped and fell in a patch of buckthorn" just makes people think you're a loser.

Palo Alto hiker "attacked" by "mountain lion"

Orange County hiker says [wink, wink] he was attacked by mountain lion


Meanwhile, in Colorado:

Man walking with wife shoots mountain lion

Mountain lion enters bedroom, kills family dog; CNN report & video ; Local news report & video

[Note to self: check doors. And leave packages outside.]

"Tracker hunts Palo Alto mountain lion after attack"

"Finally, a use for little kids."

From SF Gate:

An animal tracker hired by city officials was heading into Foothills Park in Palo Alto tonight to hunt down and kill a mountain lion that attacked a man over the weekend, authorities said.

Foothills Park and the adjacent Pearson-Arastradero Preserve were closed today after officials learned of the incident, the first known mountain lion attack in Palo Alto, said Palo Alto Police Agent Dan Ryan.

The 50-year-old hiker was uninjured but narrowly escaped with his life after the cat leaped onto him from behind about 4 p.m. Saturday, sending man and beast tumbling down an embankment, Ryan said.

Read the rest here. Gah, my sis runs and hikes in that neck of the woods...

[Although children have been attacked by mountain lions in California, IIRC only adults have been killed.]

The natives are restless

Shark 1, seal 0. Photo by Chris and Monique Fallows, via The Telegraph.

Grizzlies, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, coyotes, sharks... Do you ever get the feeling it would be safer to stay home? Well, kids, let me disabuse you of that notion: 402 Americans drowned in their bathtubs in 2004; 1,638 died after falls on stairs or steps; 596 suffocated in bed, oy. So go for a swim in the ocean, already. Go for a hike in the mountains. I'll be right here when you get back, because I'm, ah, expecting a call. And then I'm — washing the dogs. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Seriously, sharks don't scare me a bit [and why should they, when I stay as far from the ocean as possible]. More precautions: I don't pick up rattlers, which effectively eliminates the odds of my being bitten by a poisonous snake. Coyotes leave me and my stock alone [knock wood]. Bears and lions, on the other hand, scare. me. to. pieces. PSA: When house-sitting alone at a remote ranch in lion country, do not, under any circumstances, watch The Ghost and the Darkness. OMG, that was like the scariest movie ever.

I live in the 'burbs, and a week or so ago a big mountain lion was killed crossing the freeway about four miles from my house. [Wildlife corridors in this neck of SoCal? Surely you jest.] A coworker saw the lion's body at a local ranger station, waiting to be shipped to a taxidermist [the lion, not my friend]. He said the animal was scarcely marked from the impact, huge -- "seven feet, 180 lb" -- and beautiful. The lion made it safely across the westbound 10 but was killed trying to cross the eastbound lanes: that is, he was traveling from my side of the freeway back to the foothills/forest side. I wonder how much [if anything] last year's fires have to do with this activity. All you big predators stay on the Fawnskin side of the lake this summer, please.

Shark links, because big white sharks are amazing:

Killer was great white shark

Shark research in Northern California's Farallon Islands

From The Devil's Teeth:

According to Scot and Peter, the Queen Annihilator of Surfboards was a shark named Stumpy. Stumpy was nineteen feet long and weighed five thousand pounds, and when she was in residence, she ruled the Farallones. "She was the only shark that I think understood who we were, what we were trying to do," Peter recalled. "And she didn't care for it. When Scot was first putting out the decoys Stumpy would just come up and destroy them, more because she didn't like them than because she was fooled by their silhouettes."

[...]

Stumpy patrolled a swath of sea along the east side of the island near the main boat launching spot at East Landing. For prey, this was not an advisable route onto shore. "No seal gets by her," Peter said. And while other sharks would take twenty minutes or more to consume their kills, Stumpy could polish off a five-hundred-pound elephant seal in three minutes flat. Though the distinctively cropped tail fin that earned Stumpy her name hadn't been spotted for several years, Scot and Peter still talked about her with a respect that bordered on awe.

Monterey Bay Aquarium White Shark Research Project [we're not supposed to call them "great whites" -- it's as bad as "sea gulls"]

Apex Predators
[For the two people who may not have seen it: the Apex Predators site has breathtaking photos of great white sharks hunting seals off the South African Coast.]

Coyote and rattlesnake posts in the pipeline.

Lions, red knots and a valentine

UPDATE: Edited for syntax. Content unchanged.

Why you should always have your camera ready. Photo by Matthew Dickie.

I love that this happened at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Non est ad astra mollis e terris via [there is no easy path from the earth to the stars]:

JPL employees have been spotting mountain lions for years. The NASA laboratory is perched on 177 acres climbing the side of the San Gabriel Mountains into the open wilderness of the Angeles National Forest.

On its east side, the Arroyo Seco -- a stream that goes from dry to torrent depending on the weather -- courses out of the mountains onto a sandy flood basin behind the Devil's Gate dam.

Because mountain lions and other wildlife routinely follow streams, the Arroyo Seco is a natural corridor, funneling a 32-square-mile watershed down to a narrow cut -- where Dickie spotted the cougar[...]

One of several January sightings in the L.A. area: full story here.

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The red knot is an amazing little bird that migrates each year from South America to its nesting grounds in the Arctic. "A sixteen-year-old red knot has flown enough miles to get to the moon," says one birder. Grim news: some population models indicate that the species will be at or near extinction in 2010.

The knot's dependence on the eggs of the heavily harvested horseshoe crab has placed it at odds with another species -- humans. Conservation groups, lawmakers, fishermen, scientists, and ordinary citizens have all entered the debate. But even as our actions have imperiled the red knot, we can also preserve the species, by regulating the fishing industry and keeping clear of the beaches that the knots rely on during migration. Where nature ranks in our system of values will dictate how far we are willing to go to protect the red knot.

A master of long-distance aviation, the red knot makes one of the longest migratory trips of any bird -- 9,300 miles along the Atlantic flyway from its wintering grounds in southern South America to its high Arctic breeding grounds. The journey is so exhausting, it requires two to three stopovers for refueling. The horseshoe crab egg feast they will consume at Delaware Bay, is not just an indulgence -- it's absolutely crucial for the birds' survival. When the knots arrive at Delaware Bay, their bodies are half their starting weight, devoid of fat and even some muscle. Here, the red knot will take about two weeks to double its weight so it can continue its migration.

The red knot is a creature in peril. The U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan lists the red knot as a "Species of High Concern," based on declining population trends and threats on non-breeding grounds. In the last 20 years red knots have declined from over 100,000 to less than 15,000. And in 2006, the knot was named a candidate for Endangered Species Act protection as an emergency measure to slow the rapid fall of its population. In the Delaware Bay, the knot has suffered a decline so severe that some experts predict the population stopping over at the bay could disappear within five years. [Source]

Bad news for the red knot: on Monday the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council "lifted a state ban on horseshoe-crab harvesting and will allow a limited fishery in the Delaware Bay this spring."

Good news [possibly, we hope, all fingers crossed]: read more here about shoreland purchases by the Delmarva Ornithological Society Conservation Committee and The Conservation Fund.

Want to pitch in? Every dollar helps, and they take PayPal/credit cards: click here to go to the DOS donation page. It's too late for birds like the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet, but maybe we can help save the red knot for our grandkids. We can try.

[The Nature program Crash: A Tale of Two Species is scheduled for a repeat this Saturday: check local listings.]

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A day late, but I love it:

From Ironic Sans, a good blog linked to a good blog in the Nature Blog Network, now in the blogroll.

Look. at the size. of those FEET

Sleeping it off at the Redlands Animal Shelter.

She's down in Alpine (CA) now, at a sanctuary/rescue for big cats. Hope her sibling is doing OK -- the other mountain lion hasn't been seen since the day of all the excitement.

Mountain lion magnet

What is it with Redlands and mountain lions? People see them in local parks, by the local mall, out in the canyon, in their homes... and the next thing you know, it's another news story:

The mountain lion was tranquilized after it and another cougar were seen perched in a tree near two schools in Redlands, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

Local officials locked down the schools as state Department of Fish and Game wardens surrounded the tree, said Redlands police spokesman Carl Baker.

One mountain lion jumped down and ran into a wash toward an orange grove that was less than a mile away. The wardens surrounded the tree and shot tranquilizer darts at the other mountain lion as children in the nearby elementary school, whose mascot is the cougar, shouted from their classrooms.

“They kept saying, 'Don't shoot our mascot,'” Baker said.

[The tranquilized mountain lion was later released, according to this article.]

There have been a lot more sightings in the local mountains than usual -- probably due to the fires.

Vicki Hearne, Esmerelda, mountain lions and the "female Michael Vick"

Vicki Hearne's work riles me up. She was naive about dogfighters and a wee bit sadistic when it came to training --- but she was a dog person to her marrow and she could write like nobody's business. She died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 54, and I'm sorry as hell she's gone.

The University of Chicago Press has just produced a collection of thirty-six posthumous poems by Hearne, edited by her old friend John Hollander:

When I asked her what it was she worked at, she replied that she trained dogs and horses, to which I may have responded in a less than fascinated way. But within a very few minutes she had elicited my complete absorption. She spoke right away of her interest in the relation between psychologists' behavioristic accounts of what an animal was doing when it was learning to respond to a command or signal, and the very different kinds of stories that trainers would tell each other—and themselves—about what was going on.

Louisa Thomas has a review of Hearne's Tricks of the Light in the New York Sun:

[Vicki Hearne] was a prolific essayist, an assistant professor at Yale, a poet, a respected horse and dog trainer, and a passionate defender of the pit bull. She was taken seriously in both the academy and in the kennels where she spent much of her time. But she was not wholly at home in either. As she wrote in her book "Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name," "Dog trainers and philosophers can't make much sense of each other." The trainers talk about animals in anthropomorphized language, whereas philosophers tend to assume that only humans are truly moral creatures. Ms. Hearne spent much of her time trying to bridge the gap — to build off of what the philosophers say about consciousness and the trickeries of language, while vigorously defending the idea that animals are in on the game.

Read the entire review here. Vicki Hearne's work can raise hackles, but in the Jon Katz/"Marley and Me" era, it's more important than ever to recognize an intelligent author who knew a great deal about dog behavior and dog training and who never pandered to the bandana collie crowd.

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Pibble in Newsweek! Literate white guy [take that, haters] writes about his sweet Esmerelda. [Don't imagine for a second that a 70 lb German shepherd with a thunder phobia couldn't wreak just as much havoc. This just in: big dogs are strong.]

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Mountain lion stories, I've got a million of 'em: a mountain lion wandered into our neighborhood a while back and jumped up onto a wooden fence --- the fence broke under its weight, and the lion toppled through a window into someone's home. The mountain lion ran around the house for a few minutes, jumped out the broken window, and disappeared. This happened a few blocks from where I live. There are regular mountain lion sightings in the park up the street. We have deer and coyotes in the neighborhood sometimes, too, but they generally don't carry your 60 lb dog away.

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Here's a news report on that video everyone was so angry about.

I could rant about mean children, inept parents, the fact that poverty is no excuse not to clean up your yard and teach your ten year old child how to care for puppies, but that's knee-jerk, self-righteous stuff. I don't know this family. I don't know whether the mom just lost her job, whether the child has suffered some unspoken trauma --- I don't know why the girl isn't inside watching television or down the street playing with friends. What I do know is that it sucks to be poor, and that children learn by example. It's hard to do what you've never been taught.

If I could, I'd invite this kid to join me at the local shelter and help with pups and kittens. I don't think she's evil or cruel --- I suspect she's just following the sad examples she's seen since she was old enough to walk. More than punishment and humiliation, maybe she needs a chance to spend time with adults that don't scream and hit. She needs an opportunity to do the right thing --- and she needs to be shown what the right thing is in the first place. Given the chance, she could learn to be good with pups. "Female Michael Vick"? You're kidding me. If you want cruel, I can think of a few upper middle class white guys I know who beat the crap out of the family dog for one stupid reason or another ["He chewed on my tool bench when I locked him in the garage overnight"], and who will never, ever be taped by a neighbor or have their dogs taken away.

Here's a link to the follow-up video: the dogs are rescued! The [former] dog owners, not so much. From the commentary:

The district attorneys office, in particular Laura Janssen was instrumental in saving these dogs. In the videos you can see the mother dog licking the faces of a detective and Laura. I want to stress what a great animal advocate Laura is. She was wearing a very nice suit and was covered in fecal matter, from having cradled these pups in her arms.

And on camera, too! What a saint! Let's take up a collection to cover her dry-cleaning bill. [/sarcasm]

Apologies for the jaundiced attitude. The family is left as ignorant as ever and more miserable than before, but the dogs were saved, and that's the important thing --- right?