(Photo courtesy of Microsoft Dangerous Creatures wallpaper)

Last night we shared dinner with good friends in the mountain town:  simple food, cheap wine, lots of laughter as we watched the sun set over the golden landscape to the west.

We were laughing, mostly, about a story we’d all heard. We knew it was true because we’d heard it, separately, from one of the people who cast themselves as victims of the whole affair.

“Can you imagine!” she shrieked. “She just kept asking me, ‘What is your emergency?’”

The story goes something like this: Three women, visitors from Texas, had been hiking along the forest road not far from their vacation rental when they heard something behind them. They turned and saw a mountain lion.

They ran as fast as they could back to their cabin, slammed the door and dialed 911, demanding that the sheriff DO SOMETHING!

“What is your emergency, ma’am?”  That will be a code phrase between us for years, because those of us who actually live here know that deputies never arrive in time to save anyone. All they can do, really, is call the coroner. We are responsible for ourselves and for others around us; we live and die by the law of natural consequences.

We love to mock Texans, not because we’re mean-spirited but because, so often, tourists from Texas perform stunts that can only be considered laughable. Heaven forbid a wild animal should appear, in the flesh, in the middle of their vacation to the wilderness.

When the game warden, summoned from his real work, asked whether the lion had threatened them in any way, they said, indignantly, “It was eyeing us!”

“You mean ‘looking at you’?” he asked.  How dare it look directly at a gaggle of shrieking tourists!

We burst into laughter again, knowing that the real challenge would be looking away.

“Omigawd! A mountain lion in the mountains!”

I believe the mountain lion is the most beautiful animal of the American West, although there’s stiff competition. To see one in the wild is a rare treat. Hunting season draws them out but also leaves them thoroughly sated. They’re well-camouflaged and usually silent. They are, after all, cats, supremely disdainful of people.

Once in a while we’ll hear that someone has been attacked, like the boy in Idaho this week, but we don’t worry too much about it. Just don’t tie dogs so they are preventing from fighting or fleeing, and don’t let the kids play outside in the dusk without the dogs. We’ve backpacked thousands of miles and not a single one of our children has been eaten.

1. Do NOT attempt to feed this animal.

1. Do NOT attempt to approach this animal or give it a catnip toy.

1. Do NOT allow small children to walk alone on trails after dark.

1. Do NOT allow small children to walk several hundred yards ahead of you on a remote trail.

1. Do NOT attach large chunks of raw beef to your bicycle or your clothing.

1. Do NOT bring a small goat or lamb with you on the trails--even if you have it on a secure leash.

1. Do NOT hike on these trails wearing any type of herbivore costumes, unless it is an adult rhino or hippo.

1. The WAYNE'S WORD staff has discovered that mountain lions are generally frightened of large, rectangular objects the size of a door. So when hiking in cougar country, we recommend that you carry a lightweight door with you and keep it in the upright position at all times.(http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0303.htm)

Good rules all, although these are the ones I generally hear: Make noise, make yourself look big, make yourself appear as unpalatable as possible, and never, ever turn your back. 

Translation: Don’t run screaming down the trail when you see a wild animal. That’s a really bad idea.

We walked home from our friends’ house, not afraid that a mountain lion was going to leap on one of us from behind and sink sharp fangs into our tender flesh, but hoping that we’d see one, a sleek silent ghost under the stars. We didn’t. No bears’ either. What happened instead was that another friend’s Newfoundland came bounding out of the dark and nearly sent us both rolling back down the hill. That’s the real animal threat. For every person attacked by a lion or a bear, hundreds suffer dog bites. Last night, we only suffered slobbers.

This morning, our dog let out the low “woof” she uses to complain that a stray cat is eating her food. For all that she fully believes she’s an oversized curly-coated feline herself, stalking her prey rather than chasing it, she does not like cats. They parade up and down the sidewalk just outside the fence, taunting her. (So do skunks, but she learned that lesson and now can differentiate.) She has a cat bark that’s easy to distinguish from her “Let me out” voice and her, “How did I end up outside the gate? Let me back in!” voice, and separate also from her “I hate skateboards” bark.  If we respond to her cat alert (usually to yell, “Quiet!”), she subsides into a silent pointer pose, fully expecting us to exterminate the offender.  When we decline, she’s perfectly willing to trot back to her bed at our feet , at least until we turn our backs, giving her an opportunity to sneak off and drink from the toilet.

This morning’s cat was easily twice the size of our 80-lb.  lab mix. Female lions weigh 80-100 pounds; a big male might weigh 190. This one, tawny and muscular, was gnawing on a purloined elk haunch, looking much like Henry VII with a turkey leg. He looked at us and went back to his breakfast. We looked at him and quietly closed the door, moving to watch through the bedroom window until he cleaned his paws and face, stretched, and wandered up the street toward the forest that begins just a block away. Then we went out to haul the bones to the back of the house and hose off the porch.

We recognize a blessing when we see it. There was no emergency.