Welcome to episode eighty two of Get Out a Live, a bi weekly podcast
about in law tax, why they happen, and how we can avoid them.
I'm your host, Ashley, and first of all, thank you all
so much for being so patient with me as I took a break for the
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administrative stuff aside. Now let's get into our episode, because it's a long
one. It's a good one. It is once again a more traditional get
out a live episode talking about a collection of stories. And this time I
switched it up because I invited an old guest back, and this time I'm
telling that guest stories and we're reviewing them in real time as the guest hears
them. So without further ado, please enjoy this episode all about Mountain lions
with Petro's Chrisofus. Oh. I am Petros Petros Chrisoffus. I am a
wildlife biologist that specializes in human wildlife conflict in California. I am the owner
and sole member of Petator Detection and Deterrence in California Central Valley and the surrounding
mountains, and our mission is to help people co exist with wildlife using non
lethal means. Yeah. I just wander around deserts and forests and stuff like
that and help people that have some sort of conflict and how to mitigate it
properly. Yeah. So, I mean we last talked, like I said,
in twenty twenty one about mountain lions, and I was curious since then,
how has your work changed and what are the types of Like has there
been a shift in the type of conflicts that you've been seeing? How has
it changed. There's been a lot more focus lately in well, we've had
a couple of wet years in California, so that's definitely changed a lot in
terms of where the scope of the conflict is because water is much more or
was much more widely available during those two years. It used to be at
least when you put a camera in a watering area or an area that has
water in particular, you would see livestock and mount lions exists in that space.
And now it's just kind of all over the place because there is a
lot more water available, so livestock don't feel pressure to go into a particular
area, or if they have water set out for them by ranchers, the
mount lions might not necessarily visit that water because there's more water available. So
they've become i would say, a lot more unpredictable in terms of where to
find them in the area. And it's weird because it used to be that
I was able to go to a ranch or homestead and pinpoint areas that I
knew were definitely conflict hot spots because I'm like, yeah, you've got a
water tank here that a mountlon's going to visit, or a creek or whatever.
And now it's becoming a little bit more diverse in terms of hot spots
and where things might be. There's been more and more urban cases or peri
urban cases, you know, people living in cabins and stuff like that,
definitely noticing them more. I think it's also partially has to do with an
uptick in usage of the mountains, primarily because there's been more water, you
know, so some of the lakes and some of the areas the creeks that
were dry before now are getting visitors, so there's more people spotting them,
there's more rain camera footage. But yeah, it's kind of become more i
would say, more slow, and more geared towards humans and actual like humans
worrying about mount lions as opposed to a mountlon's killing livestock still happens, It's
always going to happen, but I think with the ability of people to move
their livestock to moral areas because of the water, especially because there's also much
more grass everywhere, so people can move their sheep or their goats to areas
that weren't available before. It's just kind of changed from that perspective. So
more human focused than livestock focus now, I guess, yeah, because I
think the last time we talked, there was a lot of wildfires, and
I think one of the bigger takeaways that you had last time was that,
like, the wildfires are pushing the mountain lions in areas they normally wouldn't go
to because they needed water and there was none. So now it seems like
it's shifted and now they're not nearly as reliable for you someone who's trying to
find them, which I'm sure can be frustrating, but I mean, I
guess it's good that they're not in those places as much anymore. I don't
know. Yeah, yeah, So like this year again, we've had a
couple like, we've had a bunch of fires springing up this year, but
the last couple of years have been really knock on wood like relatively slow when
it comes to fires, and I think partially because there wasn't much to burn
anyway, right, But even so, the you know, wet water years,
cooler temperatures makes the ground a lot harder to spark up when there is
you know, lightning or stuff like that. And the other thing as well
is that after a fire, you know, there's a lot more primary vegetation
like grass, which deer tend to like. So a lot of areas that
before deer weren't commonly found in because there wasn't a lot of forging to be
had now are foraging habitats. And so it went from moutline seeking refuge and
food sources and water and areas that they weren't before because they were getting pushed
to fires to I think, obviously I don't have the data to support this.
This is just something that I'm seeing on the ground by myself, but
I think that they're going back to those areas that burned up before because they're
especially now a really good source of prey, you know, because there's a
lot more primary vegetation that deer do. Like yeah, so yeah, yeah,
And can I guess going off of that, can you give us an
update on in general, like the mountain lion populations in California, Like,
how many do we have? How are they doing? Yeah? Just last
year? Well, I guess it's this year right now. California Fishing Wildlife
did a rough estimate and I think the population ranges between four thousand to six
thousand, with the more conservative approach of like four thousand, five hundred across
the whole state. It's a decent number. You know, mountlines here are
not there's no hunting season for them. You are not allowed to shoot a
mountaine unless if you have a depredation permit or the state does it, or
the federal levels do it. It does happen obviously, and I'm sure poaching
exists, but there's no official avenues of like hunting. The population is that
a lot? I am not sure. The state is a pretty big state,
and you can find mountains and areas that you wouldn't really think exist.
So I think it's less than I would have thought it was. I would
have thought they would be around ten thousand or so in the state, but
obviously that's their numbers. And they do suffer from you know, as it
pops up all the time when they use the highway. Mortalities and those are
just the ones reported, and they also you know, poaching, a lot
of identicide impacts them, and so those are practices that haven't really there's a
lot of push to change them. And obviously we have the new wildlife passages
that are being you know built up everywhere, including the one in LA that
a lot of people advocated really really hard for. And so yes, and
obviously we lost iconic p twenty two right the age of I believe thirteen.
So yeah, so those are the things. It seems like someone else has
been spotted in these areas, and couple of like backyard footages and stuff like
that. I don't know if it's a resident line that's going to stay or
what. Yeah, but hey, you know, like the famous Jurassic Park
Cote says like life will find a way. Yeah it works. Yeah.
I was curious because, yeah, P twenty two with the infamous line we've
talked about before, but in California, I was curious, maybe with P
twenty two's passing, does it seem like there was more advocacy for mountain lions
in the state of California. Yeah, I mean, you know, like
they he passed after the Wildlife pass was already a thing, right, the
structures and everything we're getting put into place. I think there's definitely he's still
the icon for the highway passes, for the wildlife corridors, and I think,
you know, as well as as a lot of advocacy for the use
of not using redenticides for that because it does it does impact every apex predator,
right, Yeah, and everything between the actual micets themselves to everything over
So I think it's just I think the mountain Lions continue to be that symbol
of like, hey, this is what can happen if you use it and
decide, you know, even if you hate the animals, it's not a
pretty fate. And so I think that's definitely something that is used, not
manipulated or anything, but I think that's just something that has been used to
show to people like, hey, you know, this is an impact of
your actions. Yeah. Other than that, I think it was just a
positive you know, and I think, you know, there's people that can
talk about B twenty two a lot more than I have, that have been
way more involved in this, But I think it was just from my perspective,
it was really positive to see so many people like actually mourning his passage,
you know, like he was clearly beloved in the city of Los Angeles,
and even to the very end, he was one of those things it
was like an icon for the area. So yeah, yeah, I was
going to say I had seen an article from last month June that a mountain
lion was actually found dead on the Venture Freeway close to the construction of the
new Wildlife crossing, which is devastating and also great showcase of why it's needed.
It's sad when that happens, and you know, it's also just one
of the things that I tell people is like, that's the one that's been
reported. Yeah, you think about how many don't get reported for whatever reason,
right, and it's not just the major highways. But yeah, it's
sad. But I guess from a very macro perspective like that, which usually
whild that biologists tend to take sometimes, is that at least its like a
suitable habitat that animals used to cross, right, Yeah, so hopefully that
crossing is going to reduce the deaths. So yeah, and I'm sure a
lot of work went into it before, Like it's not like they just randomly
picked a spot and said we're going to do this. Of course, still,
you know, it's positive that my lines are going to use it.
It's sad that the evidence for it is a death right. Yeah, And
so I was seeing that it's estimated to be completed by late twenty twenty five
or early twenty twenty six, and it's going to be the largest of its
kind in the nation. So I'm really hoping that this is the thing that
makes it more popular and then you us, because it's so needed everywhere,
but especially there where there's so many people. Yeah, and you don't really
get a sense of of that particular highway until you drive it too, you
can't, like yeah, and it just like I've driven a couple of times
and I've thought about trying to get to one end of the highway, not
even across the whole thing, right, and I'm just like, yeah,
I die a thousand times, Like there's no no ifs, so broughts about
it, like and mountains are faster than I am. Yeah. Yeah,
So it's good. It's good that it's being done. Hopefully it'll encourage especially
you know if and I'm sure that it's going to be done, they're going
to put cameras out to see what crosses and everything like that, and hopefully
that footage can kind of encourage way more people to you know, either funded
or help funded or advocate for it or stuff like that. So or just
like slow down so you'll see things. Yeah, and you know, like
you see you see the ones from the under passes Washington and there's some really
interesting stuff you know popping up and who uses it and what time they use
it and predation along those areas too. It's really cool. It's really it's
really interesting thing. Well, yeah, we saw that what was it two
years ago? Now, we saw that video from an underpass of a coyote
and a badger hunting together. Yeah, so it's like things like that,
like we get the opportunity to see cool little wildlife friendships we would never see
before. So exactly. Oh all right, Well, this episode's going to
be a little different where of course we've had you on the pod before and
had questions for you about mount in lions, but this time I'm going to
tell you mountain lion stories and we're going to go over them in real time.
So we've got I believe I said four to do, and then we're
gonna end with some like mountain lion pet stuff, and of course we're gonna
once again go over ways that everyone can stay safe a ouur mountain lions.
But I just want to reiterate at the top, like we are so much
more of a threat to them than they are to us, and these are
not common occurrences, so just we will all keep that in mind for pretty
much any animal we talked about before we get started. So the first attack
we're going to talk about actually happened in your neck of the woods, which
is why I thought to talk to you today. So on March twenty third
of this year, and you may know this story, so feel free at
the end to chime in if you have any extra insight. But twenty one
year old tailor Robert Claude Brooks and his eighteen year old brother Wyat Jay Charles
Brooks were shed hunting, which is, you know, when you're looking for
deer antler sheds in a remote area near Georgetown. And they fished and hunted
together nearly every day, so it's not like this was like a new activity
for them by any means. They were experienced outdoorsmen. So on this day,
it was around one pm and they were walking along the edge of a
dirt road and as they walked, they noticed a mountain lion was stalking them.
They put their hands up and started yelling at the mountain lion, but
it didn't stop following them, and at one point, because they were getting
desperate, they threw their backpack at it. Instead of being deterred by this,
the mountain lion charged and jumped at Wyatt the younger brother's face, and
took him to the ground. Wyatt wrestled with the mountain lion as tailan beat
it and continued screaming, and at one point Wyatt managed to get on top
of the mountain lion, but the cat started clawing at his midsection, so
he let go. At this point, the mountain lion broke away from Wyatt
and charged at Tailan, the older brother. It jumped and grabbed him by
the throat and took him to the ground as well with a severely lacerated face.
Wyatt tried to beat the cat off of his brother, but couldn't stop
it, so he ran back to their car to get cell service to call
for help. Unfortunately, help wasn't able to arrive in time to save Tailan,
and Wyatt was rushed to a hospital where he received reconstructive surgery on his
face and neck. And in response to this, some Fish Wildlife game wardens
were able to track down the mountain lion and euthanized it, and this was
the first fatal attack in Range County since two thousand and four, according to
Fish and Wildlife and Taylan, his family said, enjoyed the outdoors playing guitar
and was known as quote a very kind and gentle soul, and in a
public statement, the family said, quote a brother is a friend given by
nature. These two brothers were driven by nature. This was the first fatal
attack in California since two thousand and four, so ten years, which I
mean isn't an insignificant Like that's not that long ago. I don't know if
you know anything about the fatality before that, but I mean it seems like
this is extremely uncommon. I don't know if you know anything about that area,
but it was I think overall in historical records, it's been something like
maybe four or five fatalities in like the last hundred years in California. So
yeah, they were like obviously, twenty year difference between the two is not
year ten. I know, I know, you get it's okay, someone
tells me twenty years ago and I still think it's the eighties. Yeah,
but yeah, I know, like El Dorado County, I've been a couple
of times, not on cases, just to visit and stuff. It's more
high desert. I don't know if there's any more details released on the state
of the Mount Lion, but to me, that sounds like a very desperate
mount lion as opposed to one that's like more aggressively hunting. Yeah, and
I couldn't find any more information on it either, I think because this was
more recent I couldn't find like if there was any cropsy or anything, or
if it was you know, normal so to speak. Yeah, it's my
understanding is, especially because it's probably still under investigation, there's still a lot
of work to be done, I would assume on that. On that front,
obviously tragic, right, it's not a great way to go, right,
and it's not okay for this to have happened. Wild animals are going
to be wild animals. Yeah, it's just the way it goes. It
sounds to me like they did pretty much everything they could have done. Yeah,
right, short of like having a firearm or a pepper spray. I
say firearm, but like in that situation when your brother is tussling with a
mutlon, would you even shoot at it? Exactly? I guess technically a
gunshot to the ground might have scared it away for a second. It just
seemed like it was a very determined animal. I usually I tell people most
of the times that I don't have to worry a lot about mutlins because of
my structure, you know, like I'm really big and technically speaking, like
most men tend to be on the bigger side of things, and so you
don't tend to have to worry so much. But it's one of those things
where I kept reading it, I'm like, I don't really know what I
would do. Yeah, I guess if you had bear spray, you would
just spray it. And if your brother gets spuried, I guess it's better
than killed. Yeah. And I think a lot of people have this misconception
with these attacks that these things last a really long time, and they don't.
Right when I talk about it, I sometimes, depending on the crowd,
I sometimes joke about red dead redemption, yeah right, because especially like
red dead redemption too, you're like walking in the woods and like you get
killed by cougar before you even have a chance to do anything about it.
Really, I know it's a joke, but it also is a very accurate
representation of animal attacks. Yes, right, a lot like when it happens
to you, your mind kind of slows down, but from a bystander point
of view, it just happens so fast. I'm sure the whole thing was
like a one to two minute interaction. Yeah, and that was asulted,
right. And that's the thing. It's with cases like this, it's very
easy to be critical and say, like, oh, yeah, I would
have carried bear spray with me. I would have carried like I would have
pulled out my knife and all these things. And people ask me what you
would do. And I do have bear spray, and I do have an
air horn, and I do have a knife with me, and sometimes I
have a gun with me, But like having the mind to do all that
and to employ them correctly is a different topic together, right, Yeah,
And I think that that's kind of what the California, like State Wildlife Department
said. They were like these they didn't do anything wrong, they were traveling
together, they made a lot of noise, they threw something at it,
and it just was really determined, and I mean to be fair, So
the younger brother was attacked, brought to the ground, and then it went
after his older brother, and so he's trying to fight off a mountain lion
while he has like a lacerated face after himself being attacked, Like I can't
imagine, what do you do? You know? I think they did everything
they possibly could have, So it just it really sucked. And I wish
we had more information about the mountain lion to get more contacts maybe, But
thankfully and all the other stories that we have to talk about, well maybe
not, thankfully, I don't know, you know what I mean. In
all the other stories we have to talk about today, we have more context
as to like what the condition of the mountain lion was, So I maybe
in the next two months it'll come out more info since this was pretty recent.
But yeah, I think my main takeaway is that I guess this is
like the shittiest thing that you can possibly say in this situation. But like,
if you recreate in nature, things like this might happen, right sometimes,
And I tell people when I'm talking to them, when I do outreach
and stuff, I'm like, sometimes it's a habituate animal. Sometimes it's an
animal that's starving. Sometimes it's rabies. Sometimes it's just an animal, right,
and there is nothing that you can do about it. We don't know.
For all we know there were cubs two feet down, right, For
all we know it was starving or hat rabies or anything like that. Even
if we never find out the context, you also have to accept that sometimes
that sharing the landscape with wild animals, this is going to happen, right,
And I know we like a lot of attacks are a lot of media,
especially focus on the predators doing attacks, right, But this, this
is the thing that can happen to you with moose, right, and moose
are like big giant cows, but you spook them, they'll stomp you.
And if a moose stomps you, you're not going to have a fun time,
right, And even something like an elk or a deer can can do
severe damage to you if the right conditions are met. And so like obviously
condolences to the family. It's just a weird and I hope it gets some
sort of closure, you know, with some sort of resemblance of it,
but it is. It's just something that happens when when you create in the
wild. You know, you go hunting, you go fishing, you go
shit hunting, you just go hiking, and there's always a change, no
matter how minimal, that the conditions are such that you know, you get
attacked by something. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, All right, let's move
on to our next story. So, actually, just a few months earlier,
on February seventeenth of this year, twenty twenty four, sixty year old
Kerrie mccorkyl was cycling within a group of five other women northeast of Fall City,
Washington around twelve to fifty pm. There were three people in the front
and two others riding about two hundred feet behind in the back, and the
group said that as they were riding, two mountain lions walked behind them,
and at the last second, one of the mountain lions, a young male,
jumped and latched onto Carrie's face, bringing her to the ground, kicking
at her body with its back paws, so took her off of her bike.
The other members of Carrie's group began attacking the mountain lion with rocks,
a stick, and tried cutting its neck with a leatherman multitool. Meanwhile,
Carrie was trying to gouge the lion's eyes out and poke into its nose to
get it to release. The group stayed at this for fifteen minutes and the
only reason the lion finally released Carrie's face was because it was trying to reposition
its bike, and when it finally let go, they trapped it under a
mountain bike and held it there until Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife police arrived,
thankfully for them, because it was like this was a more remote area.
An officer happened to be patrolling at the time and was able to get
to the scene by one oh five pm, so so this encounter happened around
twelve fifty got there by one of five, which is a pretty good response
time, and the young male lion was euthanized by the department and they even
got a hound to try to track down the other mountain lion that had been
seen, but it was never found. Carrie had to undergo emergency surgery on
her jaw, but was sent home just five days after the attack, and
there was a GoFundMe for her, and on the GoFundMe there's an incredible set
of pictures of her going through recovery, like post surgery and stuff, and
you can see exactly how swollen her face got and the side of her face
that was held onto by the mountain lion easily swelled up to twice its normal
size. And thankfully her goalfundme exceeded all the goals. But like just seeing
the pictures, it is horrifying what happened to her. But I don't have
any more contexts other than this was a young male. But this kind of
seems like a opportunistic trying to go after people that are moving. I don't
know, but thankfully she was able to or is making a full recovery.
So I want to like, I'm going to take a side step here.
And so it's just one of those weird things. It might sound morbid,
and I'm really sorry if it does, but like if you think about it
from like just because we're biologists and you know, sometimes morbid is really fascinating.
It's just one of those things where like how efficient these guys are?
Yeah, right, you think getting scratched by your cat is bad, right,
try getting scratched by a cat that's like a hundred times its weight.
I mean I'm probably not a hundred, but at least depending on your cat,
ten times its weight, right, and with claws that are like so
much bigger, and sometimes like my cat scratches me when I'm trying to pell
them and I'm like, ah, you fuck her, and like yeah,
hurst it last rates a lot, and you know, you get scars and
just try to imagine that times ten on your face. Yeah, as your
bicycle, so you're also getting road rash from falling off your bike. Yeah,
I don't I don't know if they were ever they were really released the
weight of the Munta lion or anything of the sorts. I didn't see it.
I am. I am thinking that it might be on the leaner side,
just because it was held under a mountain bike exactly. And when they
said young, they don't have an age obviously, but young to me would
mean like under three years old or something. I guess I'm just thinking back
to all the male males that I've ever caught on camera, and I'm like,
there's no way even a group of five people can hold that thing under
a camera and not get hurt right under a bike, sorry, and not
get hurt. So I would imagine it's probably on the leaner side. But
it is. You know, most of the tacks are joggers or bikers,
and it is the speed, it's the leniency. Sometimes the figure is lean,
right, and that just kind of triggers a predator or respond. So
don't go biking in the woods kids, and don't go joggingly. No,
Again, it doesn't really sound like they did anything wrong, right, If
there were a group, they were biking, making lots of always probably by
talking, yeah, probably right, they hit it. She went for the
eyes and the nose, which is great tip right and go. Those are
the soft spots in an animal. I personally wouldn't have tried to trap it
under a mountain bike, even if it was like young, not because of
the animal, but because I'm like, I'm not risking any more harm to
me. Yeah, but the context obviously, if we don't know if it
was trying to run away, or if it was gearing up for another attack,
or what the context was. So maybe that was the best decision.
You know, if it's an insistent animal, just keep me it trapped if
you can works well. Well. I wonder if they also had the force
at the time to be like, we should get this tested for rabies,
you know what I mean? I mean possibly, I know that I always
do, but you know, they did as much as they could do.
One of the things that people do ask me sometimes is you carry your knife
for an animal attack. And that's the only thing that I will always really
say is that not unless if the animal is on me. You know.
The only thing that I would really try and say is that if someone is
being attacked by an animal, try and keep a distance, because if grabbing
a knife trying to get to that animal means that you might be next,
right well like at the first story. Yeah, yeah, And I think
that's the that's the only thing that again easy for someone to say who's not
in that heat of the moment, right trying to do whatever you can to
help your friend. If we were hiking in a mountline attacked you, I'd
probably try and stab it, right, even just saying don't do it.
That's what you would try and do, right, just because you think that
it would scare it. But if you have another option, I think throwing
rocks probably would have done just as much. Honestly, it sounds like the
second one wasn't found, and it sounds like there hasn't been any recurring incidents
since then, so that's good. Especially if there was two, we could
probably assume that one might have been a pre parent and one might have been
the juvenile. So it's possible the juvenile was the one like, hey,
I'm going to test this out. We'll see how it goes. But it
was crazy to me that it stayed latched onto her face for fifteen minutes,
and the only reason it was going to stop despite being literally attacked by four
other adult human beings is that it was like, Okay, I'm not killing
her by holding her jaw. Let me try to adjust, you'll probably move.
Yeah, they're persistent, you know, That's what they do. Cats,
especially once they get a hold of their prey. If they have a
good position, they're not really going to let go until they've made a kill.
Sometimes people ask me about deer whistles and if they would help, you
know, I don't think if deer whistles even help deer, to be honest
with you, Yeah, I don't really think it's a good investment. I
think an air horn might be enough to give reprieve right, and I always
I'm always a huge advocate, primarily also because if you ever get lost,
it's a good way to be relocated, right, Yeah, carry an air
horn with you. I think blasting that air horn in the mountainlin's face or
ears might have done something. Yeah, maybe have it one on your bike
if you're a mountain biker and you're worried about this, attaching a horn to
your bike. Oh, I mean, if nothing something else, even if
it's not for animal attacks, if you ever get hurt or injured, you
know, like it travels a lot more than a scream does. Yeah,
noise sometimes disturbs more than damage, because these animals are used to being bucked
around and kicked and stomped, right, and so like something unexpected to them
might be that. Yeah, makes sense. That all being said, I'm
interested to hear your opinion on the next attack. So this was from a
little bit ago. But Clint Larson on Facebook suggested our next story that took
place in twenty nineteen, and he suggested this like a while ago, so
I'm finally getting to it. But on February fourth, twenty nineteen, thirty
one year old Travis Kaufman was running on a trail at Horsetooth Mountain Park near
Fort Collins, Colorado. So once again someone running. He was an environmental
consultant who was from Arkansas and moved to Colorado five years before to get more
in his outdoor hobbies, which included running and mountain biking, so two very
mountain lion preferred activities. But as Travis was running, he heard pine needles
rustle to the side of him, and he turned to see a small mountain
lion only ten feet away. He put up his hands and screamed in an
attempt to scare the lion off, but it pounced at him, aiming for
his face, which is also apparently a common occurrence happening in the past few
attacks we talked about. But because Travis had his hands up to block his
face, the mountain lion latched on his left wrist instead and started clawing at
his face and legs. Travis tried to throw the mountain lion off of him,
but because it wouldn't let go, they were both sent tumbling down a
slope off the side of the trail. Travis at this time was five feet
tall and ten inches and at the time he weighed one hundred and fifty to
one hundred and fifty five pounds, so he quoted that he was like a
puny guy, so I don't think that's puny, but like he was basically
saying, like, I'm not a big burly guy, so you know,
it went after me. But he has made The cat was only around fifty
pounds, and after falling down the slope, all that they could do was
wrestle, and at one point he was able to pin the cat underneath him.
He tried stabbing the cat's neck with sticks, but they kept breaking,
so he grabbed a rock and tried bashing the cat on the head, but
that didn't work either, and it still wouldn't let go of his wrist.
Eventually, he was able to shift in a way where he could get one
leg up to the cat's neck and just stepped on it. And he said
he was running on pure adrenaline at this point and all he could imagine was
being stuck on this hillside with a mountain lion gnawing on him, which he
said, quote which is a pretty creepy way to go. So Travis,
with his foot was able to suffocate this mountain lion to death, and after
killing it, he had to still run a few miles to find help.
All the while he was paranoid that there was another mountain lion around that would
attack him as well, especially if he was in a compromised state. Thankfully,
though, he did not run into another mountain lion, and instead he
ran into a couple who ended up taking him to the hospital. In the
end, he needed seventeen stitches along his cheek, six along the bridge of
his nose, two on his other cheek, accounting for more than twenty stitches
on his face alone. He needed a few stitches on his wrist, and
he also had puncture wounds on his legs and neck, but those did not
require stitches. Initially, Travis didn't come forward with this story because he was
afraid that he wouldn't live up to the hype and said, quote, like
I was saying earlier, this story is bigger than my puny form. And
he also said he was really grateful he hadn't been wearing headphones, something that
we talked about when you were first here, Petros, because otherwise he never
would have heard the pie needles rustling, and never would have looked to see
what was coming, and probably wouldn't have had time to put his hands up
to protect his face and throat. Wildlife officials went back to collect the body
of the mountain lion that Travis had killed, and it had been heavily scavenged
around the time of its death. A knee cropsy found that the mountain lion
killed was only around twenty four pounds when knee cropsied, but that was likely
due to the heavy scavenging and alive, it likely would have been more between
thirty five to forty pounds, and the veterinarians doing the necropsy estimated this mountain
lion only to be three to four months old. And they referred to it
as a kitten, and it was likely a male. The teeth marks on
the bones from scavenging, they assumed was from other mountain lions, likely its
siblings. They also found abundant dried blood between the animals popads, as well
as around its nose and mouth, and it also had abrasions and bruising on
the top of its head, nose, and above the right eye, which
is consistent with Travis hitting it with a rock, and its larynx and trachea
also showed signs of significant injury consistent with Travis suffocating it. Otherwise, this
male was healthy and young and showed no sign of disease. An official said
had this been a full grown adult, the outcome for Travis would have been
very different, and that this young mountain lion still pose a serious threat to
him, as evident by the injuries he sustained. So this one, to
me seems more of a clear like this is a young mountain lion trying to
see what it can get away with, and it just ended horribly for this,
I mean for both of them, but especially the mountain lion ended up
with it dying. So I think for me it reads that the mother died.
Really the cubs were stuck by themselves. Yeah, interesting, okay,
mostly because of the fact that, like I'm assuming the wildlife officials got to
the dead the dead mount lion quick relatively fast, right, yeah, because
they would probably want to test it for rabies. And so the fact that
like as soon as it died, it was scavenged by other mount lions.
I know that they do it. It's not like their cannibalism is really particularly
shy of a thing for them, but like the fact that it happened so
fast to me tells me that they were hungry. The siblings were also duvenile
mounta lions, but they were sent back to a rehabilitation facility and the plan
was to send them back into the wild since then if their mother died,
Yeah, I think that would be the case. I think young lions are
relatively curious, but they especially three months old, they sell the better benefit
of the mother being around, and for the most part, they tend to
be hidden or low profiles, specifically so they don't get predated on by either
other mountain lions or you know, bears or whatever might kill them. They
don't mention anything about them being starving, right, Yeah, the nekruptcy.
So I don't know if that's the case. It's possible that the mother died
a couple of days ago and they haven't reached the point of like pure desperation,
right, or they had just started learning how to hunt, so they
were like, oh, this makes sense. I remember when the story first
came out and there were in any details about the fact that it was like
a tiny mountain, and I was like, really, And I looked at
it and I was like, this guy beat up a mount lion, killed
a mountline with his foot, killed a loutline with his foot in his bare
hands, and everything. I'm like, I find it hard to believe because
I don't think I can kill a mount lion, right. Hell, I
don't even think I could probably kill a cub or a kitten, just because
I don't think I cannot, not because I feel bad for it, just
because I'm not really sure I could. But you say it, I'll say
it. Protect your vulnerable areas if you have that ability, And yeah,
the headphones are definitely a no go to me. It's interesting because I also
was reading a Black Country guide talking about how like blasting music could also have
that affect in you, and that it might make it make you blind to
like animals approaching you because you obviously there's always a lot of music, but
you would think that ninety five percent of the animals would scatter, right,
Yeah, unless they're coming for you. Yeah, if he was talking mostly
about grizzlies and polar bears, if them correctly with your animals, that are
not very easily discouraged. But yeah, situational awareness being the key lesson,
right, it's good to react in such a way like to protect your face,
to protect your neck. It's like one of those things that I think
people need to understand more is your hands and your feet are good. You
want to have them, right, but they are also the body parts that
you can they make do without and still live. Right. But if I'm
outlying, does get a hold of your face, or does get a hold
of your neck, especially in the fact of your neck, there is very
little that can be done to save you at that point, right, assuming
that you're by yourself. As we found out in the second story, they
just don't let go because they do have that hold and they know they know
where to attack, right, they are ambush hunters. They're cats, they
know what they're going for. They're not just blindly going for a spot.
All of these cats in these stories we've talked about have gone for the face
and neck area. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, we're not completely detached from
nature in that way. Yeah, I think that's exact. Sometimes the main
takeaway from this podcast is like, yeah, we like to think that there's
always something wrong with animals and that's why something happened, But that's sometimes it's
just that we are out there being in nature like everything else. So yeah,
so let's get to our last attack story on people and then we'll shift
to pets. But this was another history making attack that occurred in Washington.
So this was on May nineteenth and twenty eighteen, thirty one year old Isaac
Cedarbaum and his friend thirty two year old SJ. Brooks where mountain biking thirty
miles southeast of Seattle. As they were biking on a remote dirt road,
a mountain lion began stalking them. They stopped, made themselves look big by
raising their bikes above their heads and yelling at the cougar, all things you
are advised to do if you're being stalked by a mountain lion, which pretty
much everyone in this episode has, and the mountain lion went away briefly,
but came back and pounced at them. They fought it off, initially using
one of their bikes to hit it, and they were able to show it
away again. As the pair took a moment to collect themselves and talk about
how crazy what just happened was, the mountain lion pounced on Isaac and latched
on to his head. The cougar shook him violently as Isaac tried to fight
it off, and the cougar only let go of him because his friend Sjay
ran away. The mountain lion chased Sjay down and tackled them to the ground.
This time, Isaac was the one to run off to try to find
cell service and call for help. He was able to get service and call,
but when a passerby came around, he handed the phone off because he
was very injured and having a hard time talking, and the passer by was
able to get help to where they were. A King County Sheriff's deputy got
to the scene, and when he was able to locate Sjay, they were
already deceased. But the cougar was still quote mauling the body. The sheriff
fired his gun at it and it took off. Isaac was taken by helicopter
to a medical center in Seattle that day, and hunting dogs were brought to
the scene and they tracked down the cougar, which was sitting in a tree
just fifty yards from where first responders were tending to Sjay's body. The mountain
lion was a male estimated to be around three to four years old, and
his body was sent to knee cropsy. In July of twenty eighteen, it
was concluded that there were no abnormalities found no disease, leaving no obvious indication
of why the attack happened in the past one hundred years. This was the
second time a person had been killed by a mountain lion in the state of
Washington, with the last fatality before that occurring in nineteen twenty four. This
attack was especially rare given that the pair had successfully scared the cat off twice
just for it to come back again, and a member of the state Fish
and Wildlife Department stated that they advised people not to run and that es Ja
run while Isaac was being attacked likely triggered the attack on them, but the
state rep also said, quote, we try to teach people to overcome their
base instinct. But my goodness, who is going to fault you for that?
Yeah? That's rough. Yeah, well, I mean they also both
ran, but like someone has to, you gotta get out of there.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like it was hungry or starving. Yep. In
that situation. It sounds like they tried to do at least what they did
correctly a couple of times right and again running away kind of what are you
going to do? Yeah, in those situations, I wish there was a
way to run simulated scenarios to train people in what they do right. Something
that I learned really like early, which I thought it was really interesting,
is that in Sweden they when you did take your driver's license, they take
you into an ice rink and they have you drive the car around in an
ice rinkh just to know what it's like to drive in icy conditions. That's
so smart and what you do. And I'm like, yeah, that's great,
And then in my head I was like, I wish there was a
way to do this with like bears and Mount lions in a way that is
safe. But I don't think there is not even with like trained animals.
I think it's not a thing that can feasibly roll out to the general public.
There is a thing. There isn't a program out there with bears where
they have a trained bear run at you and there's a fence between you,
but they still have one run at you, and you have like, you
know, fake bear spray that you have to get out in time to spray,
and it teaches people like, this is how fast these bears are,
This is how fast you need to be, and it kind of like trains
people to get, you know, their equipment out in time. But I
totally get what you're saying, like, how do you prepare for an attack
by a cat whose whole thing is stealth and ambush? You know, Yeah,
I didn't even know about the bear thing. That's pretty cool, and
I'm glad that that's a thing. I know. They have the fake one
right that emulates the speed, So they have a cutout of a bear charge
at you, and it emulates like this bear spray and stuff, and that's
cool, But the real animal is the bigger deal. I think you have
to suppress so many instincts. I've been bluffed charged by black bears a couple
of times, and it's just such a thing that you need to like suppress
the instinct to run away and just stay there. And honestly, like,
if I'm being very honest to you, the first two times, I didn't
register what happened until after it happened, and so I didn't really like stand
by ground so much as like being like, oh, okay, I guess
I stood my ground, yeah, by accident. It's hard. It's really
difficult. It sounds like a persistent line. I think we're going to be
seeing a lot more out of this in the future, and I think it's
partially got to do with recovering populations, more people recreating outdoors, right,
And as a biologist, yeah, like these animals have the fear of humans,
right, but not all of them do, and the fear varies,
and it doesn't matter whether they're hunted or not. It's just happens. Some
animals are going to be bolder than others for whatever reason, they're going to
be more interested in humans. You're not exactly in the mind of that animal
and what could possibly trigger it in any potential way to do what it does.
I would say the bikes triggered the initial approach, but then they got
off the bikes and obviously stayed there and fought it off and scared it off.
So like, all that to me just tells me that this either was
a hungry lion it just hadn't lost a lot of weight at that point,
or it was just determined to eat and kill at that point. It was
just like this is what I'm getting, This is what I'm going to get,
right, Yeah, I guess much like some humans are, like like
my wife's like, oh, I'm really hungry. I could eat, but
then she'll just be like, we're going to go to dinner in three hours,
I'll wait, whereas I'm like, oh, I'm really hungry. I
have to eat right now, yes, right, Like I need food in
my stomach right now. So I guess it could just very well be that
biological variety in these animals. Do I think it's happening like more frequently?
I guess. I just I don't know. I think if there's a partial
the news getting out more and more than they are, social media bias,
Yeah, for sure, social media bias a lot more ability to survive,
a lot more abilities to call for help, a lot more abilities for your
story to be believed as well. Yeah. Right. I read a book
about the gold mining prospects in California, and there's this guy that was like,
yeah, one day I was like mining gold in the river and a
wolverine attacked me and I had to beat it in the head with a shovel
or whatever. I was reading it and I was like, well, probably
a badger. If it was a badger, wasn't really a wolverine? And
did you really beat it with a shovel? Is that what you're saying?
And so all these things because you don't have a lot of proof. But
now we have the ability to record our phones, other people have the ability
to vouch for you and all that kind of stuff. We're less isolated as
a human race. Again, I think we just have to accept that as
part of nature, and we have to accept that some animals are just going
to be less scared of humans, more brave. And if I had the
resources to do with the studies, I would, But I would also I'm
pretty sure place a heavy good bet on the fact that like trails that are
more usually recreated might make four animals that are less scared of humans in the
long term, Yeah, just because they get exposed to them so much more.
Or it could be the other way around. Yeah, they don't see
people often enough. Yeah, and so they're not that scared. So it
could either be either or. And I will say, if you can,
don't run away. It's the one thing that I would definitely emphasize, try
and not run away, especially with these animals that can close the speed gap
fast. Yeah. Because Yeah, I think definitely what he did running away
triggered the response and from a hunting perspective of them mount lyon. If we
were to anthropomorphize it a little bit, which this is just how I usually
try and get my trains a thought out. I imagine his thoughts were,
this guy's injured, He's not going anywhere anytime soon. Let me get the
other one. Yeah, let me get the other one down, and then
I'll come back and finish this guy off, right, which is what you
would see in a hunting a pattern if possible. Right, It's like Fox
in the Henhouse syndrome, you know exactly. Yeah, if you ever see
the syruplus killing situations. I have a couple of videos that are like really
really brutal, but like sometimes they just lash out in animals and they don't
necessarily kill one animal before going to the other one. They just do as
much damage as they can and then try and return and finish whatever they finish,
you know. Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. So trying not
toronto if you can't, but what do you But no one's gonna blame you
if you do. Yeah, one hundred percent. So let's end with talking
about something that's probably way more common than them attacking people, and that's them
attacking pets. So if you check our Facebook, I had posted a video
in May of a family in Washington and it's like their ring camera footage like
up their yard and they were outside their yard having a barbecue. Some people
were like in the drive and washing some cars, and two of their outdoor
cats ran towards the house with a mountain lion directly behind them, and the
people jumped, one of them being a really young kid, probably like seven
or eight years old, who ran into the house immediately so ran away,
but thankfully the mountain lion just looked at them, and then one of the
outdoor cats had been hiding behind something and like jumped behind the mountain lion as
it was distracted for like two seconds, and then the mountain lion took off
after it again. So first of all, keep your cat inside that way,
it's not going to lead predators back to your barbecue. But yeah,
so that is just one instance of this happening in Washington, which seems to
be having like a lot of mountlon interactions as well. But there was one
really drastic case of mounta lions taking pets that I really wanted to get into,
and it was in a town called Nederland in Colorado back in twenty twenty
two. The town has a Facebook group called the Nedheads, so maybe it's
Nederland, which I think is hilarious. But starting in April of twenty twenty
two, they made a map of a recent string of mountain lion attacks on
dogs because that year, twenty three dogs had been attacked, stalked, killed,
or disappeared, with the greatest number of reports that year occurring between November
fourteenth and December ninth. And during that period from November to December alone it
was only three weeks. Seven dogs died, two had been stocked, and
one vanished, and one survived an attack, and people were speculating all kinds
of things, like it was one mountain lion serially killing dogs, it was
a pair, it was an entire group, like no one really knew what
was going on or how many mountain lions they had. But there were some
really troubling stories like one from November thirtieth when the Franklin family who lived in
the Hurricane Hill neighborhood and they let out their eleven year old Shitzu Willow for
a potty break before bedtime and they had their outside light on. They let
her out and Willow quote vanished in the blink of an eye, and the
family wrote on Facebook, quote, we found cougar tracks near her that we
chased desperately through the night for hours to no avail. We've continued to search
hours and acres with no sign of her. It looks like the lion,
myself and Willow were most likely to triangle just feet apart, with the lion
hidden from the snow tracks we saw. And then on October twenty seventh and
the Gamble Gulch neighborhood, which they have a great naming system in this place,
but in the Gamble Golch neighborhood. Aj Cozial's dog, Duke, a
ninety pound Bernese mountain dog mix, was led outside to go to the bathroom.
When Duke didn't return, Aj was suspicious that something was wrong, but
it was dark, so he waited until morning. When he went looking.
In the morning, he found Duke on a hillside above his house dead.
He had claw marks on his hips and neck, one of his shoulders hanging
off to the side, and half the skin on his face was torn off.
And then there was Zach Stansfield, who let out his dog Lilah,
a fifty pound Catahula lab mix, on December first. Zach went outside with
Lilah turned away for a moment, only to turn back and see the led
light on her collar off in the distance being dragged away. He saw the
light go over the barbed wire fence on his property and started sprinting towards her.
When he caught up, he saw a mountain lion holding Lilah by the
neck, and he started screaming at it, which actually made it release Lilah
and it started growling and hissing at him, but gave no chase or didn't
try to attack. When Zach went after Lilah, he rushed her to the
hospital, where she received ten stitches and a drain in her abdomen, seven
stitches to close a big wound in the back of her neck, and quote
a bunch more stitches scattered all around, twenty five total. But thankfully she
lived. And people who had lived in this town their whole lives said that
they'd let their dogs wander all the time and this had never been a problem
with mountain lions before. In Sam Peterson, Colorado Park and Wildlife's Boulder Self
District wildlife manager, so the guy who was managing this unit held a community
meeting at the Netherland Community Center in an attempt to teach people one hundred and
forty of them who arrived to listen to him ways to coexist peacefully with mountain
lions. But obviously, many of the people there said that the advice came
too late for their pets, and they wanted to know why CPW wasn't killing
or moving these mountain lions elsewhere. Sam Peterson said, in this wildlife management
unit there were two allowable mountain lion tags per season, but no one had
utilized them since two thousand and five, so this area was seeing their highest
number of mountain lions in recent years. Sam also informed people about Colorado's statute
that differentiates personal end quote real property. This statute states that you can kill
wildlife that threatens your real property like your home, livestock, or vehicles,
but you can't kill wildlife that threatens your personal property such as pets. So
CPW can trap or kill mountain lions that are killing your live stock, but
not your dog. And to be fair, they did attempt to trap some
lions in the area that had been stalking people that were walking dogs in a
leash, but they weren't successful and there were multiple theories as to why the
attacks on pets had ramped up in this time period, and some people thought
that the construction of the Gross Reservoir Damn expansion just south of Magnolia Road had
pushed the cougars out of their territory into this neighborhood. Some people thought that
the increased deer hunting by humans was dwindling their natural food source. One retired
wildlife ball just thought that low early winter snowpack, which makes the walking on
the snow louder and chronic wasting disease in the deer population could be the problem,
and some people just blamed habituation. Attacks died down in mid December of
that year, but on December twenty sixth, Caroline Bennett opened her back door
to let out her Australian shepherd, and an adult mountain lion had been waiting
on their porch grabbed the dog right as it walked out, and then leaped
off the porch into the night. So the next day, December twenty seventh,
that guy Sam Peterson I mentioned, went to a house that had been
experiencing a lot of line activity, like to the point where the lions were
kind of like casing the house and like the owners could see the lions waiting
for their dogs, like around the times that they'd normally let their dogs out.
So Sam started playing sounds of dogs barking in an attempt to get the
lions to come near them, because he had a beanbag gun and he was
going to shoot any approaching lion to try to deter them from being in the
area. But seven miles away around the same time that night, Stephanie Ndlman
and her partner Phil Chappel were unloading their car with their eighty pound husky,
malomeat mixed Coda and he was the dog was just sniffing around like ten feet
from them. Stephanie heard a loud and shrill scream from Coda and turned to
see a mountain lion twice his size quote hugging him on the ground. She
ran at the cat, screaming, but with Coda in its paws, it
tucked and rolled into the road away from her. So Phil grabbed a shovel
and started making as much noise as he could, and finally the mountain lion
released Coda, but it did not go far, just went under their cabin
with Phil only ten feet away screaming at it, and it continued to stare
at Coda, but eventually the cougar did walk away, but it only walked
four hundred yards up their neighbors driveway and attacked their neighbor's dog, but this
time the neighbor shot and killed the mountain lion. And although, like we
just talked about, it is illegal to do that, CPW didn't press charges
due to the quote totality of the circumstances. And I did find the website
that they used to track the attacks, which is Wildlife Tracker Colorado dot com
and the last attack reported was on April twenty third, twenty twenty three,
when a dog was taken off a porch and killed in sugar Loaf, which
is a town near Netherland, despite the owners trying to scare it off.
And Sam did have some advice for people who were experiencing this problem on what
to do to protect their pets and their property. He said to remove thick
brush or tree limbs where cats can lie in wait, use motion detection in
floodlights, and loud music around a home's exterior, yelling or singing when traveling
through the woods or feeding horses and gathering firewood, walk dogs on a leash,
keep pets and doors during prime mountain lion hunting times like dawn and dusk.
And they said if you have an encounter with a mountain lion, contact
cpw's Denver headquarters at three oh three two nine seven one one nine two on
weekdays from eight am to five pm. And if your encounter occurs outside those
hours, contact your local sheriff's office, which I will link. I will
put all this info in the episode description, But yeah, I hadn't heard
of another instance where like mountain lions were serially killing dogs and approaching people to
kill dogs. I know P. Twenty two did it towards the end,
but this was like a very extreme circumstance. It seems, Yeah, this
is wild. I've never really heard about this. I'm surprised flew under my
radar. That is like, you know, horror levels of intensity right there.
Yeah, and say, someone who has four dogs is scary to think
about that kind of thing. My dogs is in the woods with me,
sniffing stuff and doing stuff, you know. I mean, it's obviously an
isolated case, right, It's not like it happens all the time. The
advice given to keep your dogs safe is good at solid advice. I'm very
surprised. Usually fifty pounds or higher is not something that mountain lions will usually
go for, unless if they're very desperate. Yeah, it's kind of hard,
and they don't know if it's just one lion or multiple lions. I
would assume at this point, since one of them was shot and killed and
there's been more, it's probably more. It sounds like some sort of learned
behavior to me. Yeah, And I'm wondering if it did start with like
a mother feet and kittens dogs or hunting dogs and teaching them how to hunt
dogs, and then it just kind of went from there. The down expansion
definitely played a role in moving the lions. I don't know if it made
them attack dogs, though, usually when there's like a territorial shift, it
just usually ends up with some lines either dying or leaving and then eventually dying.
So I'm very surprised to hear it, and it does suck. Right,
give me your pet on a leash and indoors if possible, is the
best option. Right, If you live in an area where there are predators,
I would always advise, like open the door, shine a flashlight across,
make sure, like and these are ambush predators, so their job is
not to be seen. Right. I've had people who have approached me in
the past who say, like, look, according to my ring cameras,
I have a mountainline that checks inside my doors and my house every every other
night or whatever, and they go by. Makes sense, right, I
mean, I look at my neighborhood. I'm like, I'm not lying,
wouldn't do it here. But if it's like a house and then like a
mile away is another house, to them. It's just part of a habitat,
right, And if you have cats scurring it out around in the middle
of the night, the animals are gonna get curious. So I usually suggest
is that I have like outdoor radios, and some of these ones are really
cool. You can program them to start at a specific time, and so
I always tell people, like, if your dog is going out at six
am, usually I advise for more sunlight. But if your dog has to
go out at six am, which is when you wake up, have a
radio with a podcast go off at like five five point thirty, right,
or even like just fifteen minutes prior, have something go off that sounds like
human voices. Go out, check the yard first, like a scan with
a particularly strong flashlight, and then let your dog out. Right. It
minimizes, but it doesn't entirely reduce the chances of that happening. Clearly,
Like in this case, there was like ten feet away from them, and
they ran up and grabbed the dogs, right, and stuff like that.
It's like an extreme case of that happening. Obviously, yeahed injured animals will
do that, desperate animals will do that, and sometimes just animals. Right,
you know, the food is a great reinforcer, so if you get
away with doing it once or twice, you're gonna keep doing it. Dogs
don't always have the best survival skills, so it makes sense some of these
guys are just lovable idiots. Yep. I have two of them. Out
of the four dogs that I'm looking right now, I think maybe two will
bite back in case of an attack. Haven't you used this podcast before to
scare away about lines like on a round I have. I still do.
I still use Get Out Alive as a podcast, like as one of the
options for people. I'm like, here you go. It's what I usually
use things that I know people talk about a lot. You know, there's
there's certain radio stations or podcasts that do talk, but then there's like musical
interludes and then they talk again and stuff like that, And I try and
keep it to the point where like, talk regularly and then different voices is
really important. Don't play the same thing all the time and stuff like that
to prevent that habituation. So what we got to do is start switching up
our tone to voice and start talking to the mountain lions directly, so it'd
be like, hey, if you're a mountainlined listening to this, get out
of here, Get out. I think you talk to you enough different people
that it is is not very that it gets fine, you know. Yeah,
God, I just like I'm trying to imagine what it would be like
to be in that position. You know, No, and you know I
live here, So you're in California where you know you have these animals around
you, but like I live here in New England. We don't have them
here anymore, and we don't have wolves. Like the biggest things we have
are coyotes and bears. And I live like behind me is miles of woods.
I know that there's coyotes and bears there. I have a porch that
hasn't underneath. I let my dogs out my fenced in yard. I never
think, like I'll like, look, you know, once in the yard
before I let them out. But like, I can't imagine having to go
outside, look for a predator that could easily kill me, and then decide
if I'm going to let my dogs out. I can't imagine what it's like
having to live that life. So I feel so bad for these people and
having to find your dog dead. Oh God, I can't cannot imagine,
you know, instances like this is what, in terms of perception, sets
you back ages. Yeah, there are thousands of cities and thousands of towns
that live with mountainons amongst them, and you don't get instances like this,
right, But obviously this one making the news and existing is going to change
the perspective somewhat. It's tough, and I think the best thing you can
I don't know about carrying a gun again, I don't know if I would
try and shoot them outline that has a hold of my dog. Yeah,
I'm not that good of a shot, right, I am not that good
of a shot. I don't think I can do it. And the same
goes for like, you know, pepper spray and stuff like that. Dogs
are dogs, Like if you pepper spray them, they'll run away. If
you bear spray them, they'll probably run away, right, and then you
just lost your dog. Probably gonna get eaten by a mountlon. Maybe so.
Tactics that are usually commonly used to deter lifestyle guardian dogs from getting killed,
and these are very state dependent because some of these could be illegal.
Right, but there are callers out there that have spikes and there are little
I think there's little dog vests, Chihuahua vests with spikes, well post one
on Instagram. They're very silly. Some of these are not made from good
material, right, and so will easily bend or whatever. There are options,
right, especially the collars with the spikes. It doesn't kill your dog,
It won't protect your dog one hundred percent, but it does give it
an opportunity, protects the most vulnerable spaces. And that's that's reaching to the
extreme. I honestly would say put some put some human voices on, get
out check it, try not to go walking with your dog, or try
not to let them out when it's dusk or dawn. Yeah. Right,
but again, as we said prior to the podcast, is one hundred and
ten here now it's one hundred and fifteen the other day, Like when am
I going to walk my dogs? Right, it's either as soon as the
sun goes down or right before the sun comes up. Right. Yeah,
So you win some, you loose some. I think just making enough noise,
singing, talking, keeping your pet on the leak the only reason why
the leash is a good idea, even when they do stuff like come and
grab your dog from under your feet, right, is because you act as
another resistance, and that's really all that there is when it comes to these
animal attacks, is you're trying to make it as hard as possible for these
animals to kill you or take your pet or whatever. So they decide,
I'm going to go somewhere else and deal with it, and hopefully that somewhere
else is a natural resource except your neighbor's dog, which is what happened in
this situation. Yeah, oh my god, I know this is this is
bizarre one and it definitely feels like some sort of learned behavior. To me.
It feels like some of them outlines just picked up that these are easy
prey. And the fact that you know some of them were waiting until the
dogs were let out, yeah, just indicates to me like that this is
what they learned, right, They learned they were watching. I think like
when you say they learned and they're watching, people must have think like,
oh, they just sat down in the house and watched it for days and
stalked it. And I don't think that's what happened. I just think they
kind of learn In your head, you kind of pick up some of the
patterns that happen when a dog is going to be let out, right,
Yeah, especially in quiet communities, they probably hear the walking of the dog
and the person. They probably see some lights turning on and they're like,
oh, this person is going towards to do this, Right. Do I
think there was a mountain line posted in front of a house every day for
a week to find out right down the dog's potty patterns? No? But
do I think they've picked up on some environmental cues on what it's like for
humans to let their dogs out. Yes, and I think they were utilizing
them very very well. Yeah, so maybe that's another piece of advice,
like switch it up. He Yeah, It's possible that the mountain lions that
were doing this either learn from that one mountainine being killed, like oh,
maybe we shouldn't do this anymore, or they naturally died or moved on,
like maybe more prey became available. But yeah, it does seem like that
pattern finally broke and I couldn't find any more information from that neighborhood specifically,
but hopefully things have calmed down. Hey, if you're anyone from that neighborhood,
reach out to Ashley. Right, if you're a nedhead. You let
me know. You know, I think I would be interested to see if
the tags were taken the past couple of years and if that did some sort
of impact, right. Yeah, they said they were unutilized for a while
now before that happened thousand and five. Yeah. I'm not a huge proponent
of hunting is a solution to solve conflict. I think it causes more conflict
in a lot of situations than it does others, and I think it just
redirects specific conflicts to other people. Yeah, but I'm wondering in this case,
if there was some pressure put on the lions, either a reduced population
in a fairly small area, right, which would definitely have an impact,
or if it was just enough to be like, Okay, this area is
no good for me. There's people around kicking around the woods shooting guns.
Like, even if you don't kill the lion, the noise itself like would
have been enough. Right. And I don't know if part of the tags
allowed for hunting hounds, but if you if you ever had the opportunity to
look at what it's like to like hunt amount lion with hounds, very chaotic,
yeah, and it's stressful it's really stressful for the animal itself, and
that association dog sparking is scary versus dogs barking is meal time might have made
a difference, very true. I know that that's one of the arguments that
hound masters hound hunters are using to reinstate hound hunting in California and other states,
that they banded or limited it. Man, I don't know. My
feelings are complicated. It's obviously used for research a lot, because it is
very useful to be able to treat them outline safely, you know, shoot
anesthesia on it, recover it, take it down, collar it, and
all that good stuff. But also I don't really know how fair game it
is for the animal. It feels really stressful for all large chunk of it.
But I also do know having talked to a lot of people that especially
hound people have a really huge appreciation for the animal themselves. Like they are
if you look at any of the conservation stories, they're in the forefront for
trying to conserve the animals and trying to limit you know, the take for
males and females and stuff like that. So maybe it's just a practice that
is gonna suck, but it's gonna help. Yeah, Like in a lot
of things with wildlife, you need some nuance. Sometimes maybe it's a good
idea to let a bunch of dogs roam around the woods and bark and scare
mountains, because it might just teach them don't kill dogs. Right, Yeah,
it's the beauty of wild life management. It is messy all the time
and nuanced all the time. Yeah, you have biology. Really, what
applies to one situation might not apply to another. Oh my god. Yeah,
I mean we just did a bonus episode last month on gay and queer
animals and it's like, there is no nature does not fit in any box.
Ever, there's always exceptions. There's always weird things. Yeah, no,
if boxes are boring. So on that note, thank you so much
for doing this, Petros. Where can people you gosh? I am on
Twitter, I am under just peachrisofice my handle. I am on Facebook.
You can go find Predator Detection and Deterrence on Facebook or the website itself.
It's been a while since it's been updated because life just takes a humble but
it's there. There's some there's a lot of helpful tips there when it comes
to dealing with animals. And there's going to be more uploaded sometime soon and
Instagram Chrisoffus Petros and there's email links to those if any of you have any
issues that you want to address, and yeah, that's pretty much it cool.
Yeah, link those in the episode description so people can find you if
they need help. And yeah, thanks again, always a pleasure. Thank
you. All right, that was episode eighty two with Petros and me talking
about mountain lions once again. And if you want more info on mountain lions
or just more info about Petros, check out the episode description to get links
to all of his socials. That's where you could also find links to our
website and all of our socials. And also if you check out our website,
I'm now trying to post blogs that kind of summarize our episodes and give
you main points of the episode. So like, if you're struggling, for
example, with mountain lions in your neighborhood or you're worried about them as you
go hiking, you can check out a blog post that summarizes everything for you
so you can read it whenever you need. Thank you all so much for
listening. Thank you for your patience, your continued support, everything. I
hope you're all having a fantastic summer, and we'll see you in two weeks
with a new animal tax story voted on by your patrons. See you then,