# At which point, she crapped her pants in fear



## Big Don (May 25, 2011)

*Mountain lion killed on resident's porch*

*By EVE BYRON Independent Record   EXCERPT:*
*|  Posted: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 8:30 am*
		   	UPDATE 9:20 a.m. -  Charlene Wilkinson just wanted to read the news, not be the news when she picked up the Independent Record off her porch Wednesday morning.
  	Then she got a call from the Helena Police dispatcher shortly after 7 a.m., telling her to stay inside and move away from the windows because a mountain lion was curled up on her front porch, precisely where she had picked up her newspaper just moments earlier.
  	"They told me not to even look out the window because I could startle it and it could go through the window," Wilkinson said, recalling a Townsend mountain lion that did just that. "So I got away from the window and called my son."


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## Bill Mattocks (May 25, 2011)

It's not that uncommon in some parts of the country.  Cougars are far more dangerous that wolves, which are more feared for some reason.  Cougars often get tangled up with humans because they see household dogs and cats as prey and they will follow them into the house through pet doors, and if humans get in the way, they get attacked.  Bikers and backpackers in Colorado and other mountainous areas of the US have been attacked many times.  I was looking for a news story that this reminded me of - when I lived in Colorado, a local woman was on her back porch with a broom, sweeping it off, and a mountain lion came up on her porch, grabbed her poodle, and ran away with it.  Dog was found partially eaten some miles away.  Cougars really aren't afraid of people much, and they can kill the average adult without too much trouble.


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## Carol (May 25, 2011)

Of course we can. 

Oh...you mean the other kind of cougar....


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## Big Don (May 25, 2011)

Oh, I'm not saying she is wrong to crap her pants. When the cops call and say not to come out because they are about to shoot the mountain LION, and to me, LION is the key word there... crapping your pants is entirely called for. Not only because of the LION, but, because there are a lot of stories of poor police marksmanship...


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## MA-Caver (May 25, 2011)

I'm pissed off that they HAD to kill it... wasn't there anyone with a tranq gun around? They could've simply re-located the animal instead of killing it. 
Wild predators are doing what wild predators do. That people are in THEIR ancient range that is probably imprinted genetically and so they sometimes wander back to their old territories... 

Sheesh...


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## David43515 (May 25, 2011)

Moments later, Dave Loewen, a game warden with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, shot the year-old mountain lion from the safety of his truck.Loewen said they initially wanted to dart the lion and capture it, but it was too dangerous to do that in the residential neighborhood."I couldn't get a clean shot, and if I darted it and it didn't take effect, it would run off. I didn't want to make a second problem," Loewen said.It sounds like they weren`t in favor of killing it either, but in a residential neighborhood, there are too many risks of something going wrong before the drugs take effect.It could find someplace else to hide and not be found until it wakes up, or I`m thinking there might be kids on their way to school that time of the day. I don`t like it either, but it`s hard to second guess the people on the scene without knowing the facts.


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## Blindside (May 26, 2011)

As someone who has darted mountain lions (and bobcats), I can tell you that they don't necessarily drop down and go right to sleep.  Usually you dart them when they are treed, but if you do it in the open there is no telling where they are going to wind up, or if a follow up dose might be required because you misjudged the weight of the animal.  It would absolutely suck to have to go yard to yard trying to chase a cougar through fenced lots, big liability for the officer.  They had to do something similar when they found a young male shacking up in the basement of a partially completed house in one of our suburbs over here.  Unfortunate, but I completely understand why they do it.


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## elder999 (May 26, 2011)

MA-Caver said:


> I'm pissed off that they HAD to kill it... wasn't there anyone with a tranq gun around? They could've simply re-located the animal instead of killing it.
> Wild predators are doing what wild predators do. That people are in THEIR ancient range that is probably imprinted genetically and so they sometimes wander back to their old territories...
> 
> Sheesh...


 
Don't be pissed. This is,* sadly*,often  policy: predators that are acculturated to people *need* to be put down. Not only because of the danger they pose to humans, but because they'll teach their offspring to use humans as a food souce-whether for pets, garbage, or as food themselves.Simple relocation won't work for this, many times. Bill's kinda wrong about mountain lions-while they don't have much natural fear of a _anything_, they have a tendency to avoid human contact.Yes, where human habitation touches on their habitat, there is inevitable interaction. With the increase in people hiking an mountain biking in their already diminished territories, this becomes even mlore true, but an animal that's unafraid to approach a person's porch has to be killed....so, it's okay to be sad, but don't be surprised, or angry-it's not like they're endangered, or anything-there are regular hunts for them in most of the places they live.
.
Story up in Colorado Springs about one lounging under some kids' trampoline in the yard.....scary.


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## WC_lun (May 26, 2011)

This reminds me of a time I went hiking on White Rock Mountain in Arkansas.  At the top of the mountain there are small cabins in a state park.  When we got up there we met the park ranger and was having a conversaion when he got a phone call from an elderly lady in a nearby cabin.  It seems a rather large black bear had decided to take a nap curled up again the only door out of the cabin.  She tried to shoo it away by sticking a broom through the screen door and "sweeping him off the porch."  It didn't work.  We watched the ranger scare it away by banging his club against a trash can lid.  Of course we watched from quite a ways away.  Black bears may not be grizzlies, but they are BIG!


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## Big Don (May 26, 2011)

The only encounter I ever had with a dangerous animal, was a rattlesnake. We had been out at the rock quarry shooting cans when one of the guys grabbed a small log and startled the rattler.


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## elder999 (May 26, 2011)

Big Don said:


> The only encounter I ever had with a dangerous animal, was a rattlesnake. We had been out at the rock quarry shooting cans when one of the guys grabbed a small log and startled the rattler.


 
Stepped on a rattler once. You'd have believed a black man could fly.......:lfao: (seriously, jumped three feet up and six feet away, turning in midair to keep an eye on the snake. Don't have moves like that when I'm not scared....:lol: )

Haven't had a lot of mountain lion encounters that were particularly scary. Heard one in the dark once, and tripped over a kill at sunset once. Got my *** home.....:lol:

Lost count of the bear encounters a few years ago. Still makes my heart beat a little faster, though....every time is like the first time.


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## Big Don (May 26, 2011)

Dan jumped back, yelling "SNAKE" Paul and I jumped in 12ga and 16ga, no more snake...


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## Sukerkin (May 26, 2011)

:nods:  

There's a reason why we are the dominant species on the planet ... it's because we kill anything that threatens us.  If an animal kills one of our group, then the group, rather than shying away from that creature, actively hunt it down and destroy it.  That is pretty much a unique species characteristic as far as I know?

That's why nearly all other predators, the ones that can reason to an extent, leave us be - thousands of generations of programming of the genes telling them that the "upright naked monkeys" are bad news.

I raise my hand in the air and admit that I am what I term "Humano-centric".  Anything that threatens us gets a one way trip to the not-being-alive-any-more destination.


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## clfsean (May 26, 2011)

elder999 said:


> Stepped on a rattler once. You'd have believed a black man could fly.......:lfao: (seriously, jumped three feet up and six feet away, turning in midair to keep an eye on the snake. Don't have moves like that when I'm not scared....:lol: )
> 
> Haven't had a lot of mountain lion encounters that were particularly scary. Heard one in the dark once, and tripped over a kill at sunset once. Got my *** home.....:lol:
> 
> Lost count of the bear encounters a few years ago. Still makes my heart beat a little faster, though....every time is like the first time.


 
I did that once. Didn't step on it though. Let me preface by saying I DO NOT have a good vertical jump. And also I hate snakes.

I jumped off a small rock ledge in AZ up the in the backwater hills of the Superstitions. It was maybe a 3-3.5 foot drop from the ledge where I was to where I wanted to be. When I hit the ground, I startled a jackrabbit & it ran. As soon as the rabbit moved I heard the rattler go off & it sounded pissed. I went straight back up the way I came without ever looking & landed flat footed on the ledge I just dropped from. I never saw it, but I wasn't hanging around to look for it to give it a one way trip to snake purgatory. 

The ones I hate are water moccassins. Those snakes have a poor attitude when it comes to fishing. Normally they loose the arguement at the business end of my pistol, but there has been a time or two where they've had control of my jonboat until they decided to leave. Here in the South, they like to hang on tree branches at times & will drop into your boat if you're coming down their water way. I just leave the boat & float along nearby until I see it leave. Then it's sent on its way to the 9th ring of snake hell.


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