Lion sightings

Some sneaky, creepy creatures have been slinking around hereabouts.     

No, I’m not talking about the latest crop of political candidates. What have been sighted several times are members of the species Puma concolor, otherwise known as a mountain lion, a catamount, “old screamer” or a painter cat.     

The first few sightings were brushed aside as figments of overactive imaginations. After all, what would cougars be doing clear out here in the middle of the prairie, so far from their mountainous haunts?     

But reports from the public kept trickling in. The last doubts regarding this issue were erased when a young mountain lion was filmed by a doorbell camera in Sioux Falls, an urban area where large numbers of urbanites are known to dwell.

A few years before that, a game camera had recorded crisp, clear photos of what was clearly a puma. That camera was located 30 miles from our house, and mountain lions can sprint as fast as 45 mph. You do the math.

I, for one, immediately believed the initial reports of mountain lion sightings in our area. After all, I had endured a lion-in-the-neighborhood scare when I was a boy.     

My 14-year-old cousin was the one who saw it. He was raking alfalfa in a field located about a half a mile from our farmstead when he espied what he thought was a large, tawny dog. When he drew closer, the animal bounded off, taking long, very undog-like leaps. By counting the windrows, he was able to calculate that each of the animal’s leaps covered more than thirty feet.     

The sighting was promptly reported to the adults and the report was promptly poo-pooed. But then my cousin showed the adults the huge, cat-like pawprints the creature had left in the hayfield. Pawprints that were larger than a man’s fist. This wasn’t just some poor little puddy tat.

The news spread like wildfire throughout our neighborhood. There’s nothing like knowing that a humungous, world-class carnivore is on the loose — especially one that might view a kid as a tender and delicious McNugget — to sharpen a boy’s senses. All the kids in our neighborhood became profoundly paranoid.     

Some of our favorite activities, such as playing out in the shelterbelt, were turned into lengthy debates. Was it safe to go out into the trees anymore? How could you tell? Who wants to go first? Which kid will take the lead and thus be the one most likely to have a cougar drop silently upon him from a high branch and treat him like a cold ice cream cone on a hot summer day?     

And what about riding bikes? Can a kid pedal his bike fast enough to outrun a mountain lion? Would the cougar eat the bike, chewing on the tire’s inner tubes as if they were baloney skins and using the wheel’s spokes to pick his teeth?     

The rest of the summer passed without any further lion sightings, but our paranoia grew unabated. It didn’t help when my grandparents reported they heard weird, womanlike screams arising from somewhere out in their shelterbelt one night. Screams that pierced the soul and made your hair stand on end.     

Summer faded into fall, and our mountain lion angst waxed as the length of the days waned. Doing evening chores in the gathering darkness was especially challenging. We would walk carefully up to the granary while carrying our five-gallon buckets, scanning the barren trees behind the building for any sign of movement.

Was that the flick of a tawny tail? Were a pair of yellow eyes regarding us greedily from the deep shadows, gauging our movements, coldly and cunningly calculating which of my siblings was the slowest and the easiest to catch?     

Evening chores on our dairy farm got done in record time that fall. I never thought I would be able to sprint while carrying two five-gallon pails full of grain; but with lengthening shadows and an energetic imagination to push me along, I found it was actually quite easy.     

I carried a Barlow jackknife when I was a boy and spent an inordinate amount of time sharpening its blades. I also expended vast amounts of effort practicing a quick draw of sorts: dig in my pocket, turn the knife the right way, find the blade, unfold it and assume a defensive posture. No cougar was going to take me without a fight.     

Wildlife experts tell us mountain lions are usually quite shy and attacks on humans are extremely rare. They contend we have little to fear by, for instance, venturing out into our shelterbelts after dark.     

OK, fine. You go first.

Jerry Nelson is a recovering dairy farmer from Volga, South Dakota. He and his wife, Julie, have two sons and live on the farm where Jerry’s great-grandfather homesteaded over 110 years ago. Feel free to email him at [email protected].