Speaking of massive cajones, this Idaho woman restrained her dog & mountain lion
“The woman restrained both her dog and the mountain lion while yelling for her husband, who was still inside the house, to grab a gun. Her husband responded and quickly dispatched the mountain lion as she held on to it,” the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) described in a news release Monday.
Local police officers and a wildlife official arrived on the scene roughly 30 minutes later. The responding officer from the IDFG recovered the roughly 35-pound juvenile mountain lion’s body and confirmed the carcass would be sent to a nearby lab for testing.
Looks like you should never go outside and not be strapped. And i forgot that bears and big cats have been known to go into people’s houses, just be strapped all the time I suppose.
Eh…You’re much more likely to be killed while driving to the trail head by a drunk or some tween on twitface than by a bear/mountain lion/Chupacabra/whatever.
True, but it does happen to people, and it might happen to someone here. It’s like crime, it probably won’t happen to you, but it does happen to people and that’s why they are armed.
Mountain lions and bears are moving out of the mountains into more populated areas. There has been mountain lion sightings in my area, including by my wife. But when we reported it to TWRA they were like “nahh, there aren’t any around here”; my neighbors got the same treatment. And about a mile down the road a bear went after our friend’s dogs.
That one was 35 pounds apparently.
While any cat can rip you up pretty good, I think once you’re dealing with a cat of about 50lbs or so, that’s where they, for the most part, start getting pretty unmanageable without a weapon.
I love cats personally, they are some of nature’s most highly evolved killing machines, but really the only reason they are safe to have as pets at all is because of their size.
Do you have a 50lb or 100lb dog you trust, that sleeps on the bed with you or plays with your kids? Would any sane person trust a cat of that size in their household? At 100 lbs we are in the adult cougar or leopard zone, and there’s no way I’d sleep soundly with one of those loose in the house all night, no matter how “tame” it is.
Even a domestic housecat, simply scaled up to the size of a German Shepherd would be too dangerous an animal to keep in your home.
Yeah. I know people that do this. Best black leopards in the business until they died of old age. Another friend has/had a few lynx and bobcats that would share the enclosed patio during happy hour.
Me? No. No thank you. The killing machines can stay outside in their cages. The bedside is reserved for the malinois.
A large dog can definitely kill some people, especially the older and younger. Now 2 dogs…unless you have a weapon available, your odds are very slim. The difference is the pack mentality. Cats don’t have it like dogs, those bastards can never be fully trusted. There always that chance that the bi-polar kicks in.
That’s my state DNR’s take on them, but with a wink and a nod, even though they are protected again after not having been sighted in 75-100 years.
There was some study done recently about cats that got a little buzz - their conclusion: Your housecat would kill you if it was bigger. Big cats are fascinating, but I would never treat anything the size of a bobcat or larger as a true pet, “domesticated” or not. Funny that I don’t think twice about allowing my 110lb Rottweiler into bed (well, he allows me use part of it, anyway). It took thousands of years to domesticate dogs to the point they’re at now and there’s a degree of co-dependency, but cats didn’t go through the same process. I can count on one hand the number of “neat” pet cats I’ve seen in my life, and they were only neat because they acted like a dog.
My son and I went hiking in that same area today. I certainly was more vigilant than I ever was before. Normally, we just watch out for the occasional rattler, but now we keep our eyes peeled for that highly unlikely encounter with Colorado’s apex predator.