Don’t worry, park staff quickly responded.

An eight-year-old girl was camping with her family at Olympic National Park in Port Angeles, Washington, over the weekend when she was attacked by a cougar, officials said.

The National Park Service said the attack happened at Lake Angeles about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. The cougar fled the area after the girl’s mother screamed at it, FOX Seattle reported.

Park staff quickly responded to the area and treated the girl for minor injuries. She was transported to a local hospital for further evaluation, the service said. The area was also temporarily closed to the public.

“Due to the extreme nature of this incident, we are closing the Lake Angeles area and several trails in the vicinity,” Olympic National Park Wildlife Biologist Tom Kay said in the release. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Lake Angeles Trail, Heather Park Trail, Switchback Trail, and the entire Klahhane Ridge Trail are closed until further notice.”

Wait for it…

If found, the cougar will be euthanized and removed from the park for a necropsy. Officials said this may provide clues for why the attack occurred since cougars are rarely seen and attacks against humans are rare.

Oh, yes, another rare instance of a wild animal attack. These rare instances sure do happen often.

And via Liberty Park Press.

It has been legal to carry firearms in national parks since 2010, though an advisory from the National Park Service notes, “In areas administered by the National Park Service, an individual can possess a firearm if that individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm and if the possession of the firearm complies with the laws of the state where the park area is located. 54 U.S.C. 104906.”

A supplemental note at the end of the advisory adds, “Visitors should not consider firearms as protection from wildlife.”

Work that one out, ugh.

Source.

A string of mountain lion attacks on dogs in the Nederland area has left many community members concerned about the safety of their pets.

Nederland resident Peter James said the community has lost around 12 to 15 dogs to lion attacks in the past six months. Most of the attacks are logged on a wildlife tracker James said was created by a local designer.

“It’s gotten sort of out of hand and it needs to be addressed,” he said. “It kind of feels like, is the community responsible for maintaining this kind of safety?”

On Monday, a woman in Rollinsville shared in a Nederland Facebook group that she watched her Australian Shepherd get snatched off her porch by a mountain lion. James said group members have also posted about attacks on a Doberman and a Great Pyrenees.

Three weeks ago, James said around 50 people attended a Colorado Parks and Wildlife lecture on mountain lion safety at the Nederland Community Center, with over 70 tuning in remotely. Some residents, he said, are even concerned about kids becoming targets.

“This lion is now coming up on decks, taking dogs that are 100 pounds, and we’re worried about a little kid who weighs maybe 40 pounds,” he said.

Jill Dreves, executive director of Wild Bear Nature Center in Nederland, said she has noticed a pattern of recent lion attacks near Ridge Road and Magnolia Road.

“There is an increase,” she said. “It’s not made up. There’s a big increase in dogs getting taken by mountain lions.”

[ … ]

“I think the most important thing is to understand that we are sharing a habitat with the mountain lions, bears, moose and all the other wildlife,” Dreves said.

In another report, “Since early November, she had been contending with the lions, which she says had been “actively stalking” her mini horse and daughter’s pony. Her tenant, Sarah Bennett, had also encountered them on early-morning runs with her dog, Bagel.

The lions had been around for weeks by that point. Rose had seen them watching the horses from a hillside on her land in the Roosevelt National Forest. Reports of lions attacking dogs in her immediate neighborhood, coupled with their sudden interest in the livestock and Bagel, had put her nervous system in “overdrive,” she says.

The night she texted CPW was a breaking point. A lion had been sitting outside of Bennett’s garden-level door, seemingly waiting for her to bring Bagel outside to pee. Bennett saw it 25 feet away and rushed the dog back inside. “I felt like it knew our patterns,” Rose says. “It knew Bagel lived there, and it was waiting to attack.”

What are the authorities going to do about it?

“As morbid and messed up as it sounds, if we just have a dog getting attacked or killed and no human involvement, then it’s just lions doing lion things and we can’t kill them,” Peterson said. “But if we were responding to every pet that was killed by wildlife with lethal removal, then we would be spending the majority of our time as officers (at least on the Front Range) doing that, and we would have to kill a lot of bears, lions, bobcats and coyotes. Instead, I think the best solution is advocating for responsible pet ownership and being diligent with your pets when living or visiting areas where wildlife are likely to be.”

I agree with everything he said, except the part about “we can’t kill them.”  Maybe he can’t but you sure can, and I sure would if a lion was threatening me or my family.  I find it oddball that people who live in Colorado would be surprised at this sort of thing.  Where do they think they live, anyway?

I did have to read this part several times to get the full force of it.

AJ Koziel’s 90-pound Bernese mountain dog mix, Duke, vanished from his house in the Gamble Gulch neighborhood near Rollinsville on Oct. 27.

Koziel let Duke outside to go to the bathroom. When he didn’t return, Koziel knew something was wrong. It was dark, so Koziel waited for morning to go looking. When he found Duke’s body, on a hillside above his house, he says he saw claw marks on his hips and most of his neck, “one shoulder hanging off to the side, and half of the skin on his face torn off.” As someone who honors the natural life-and-death cycle, Koziel said he left Duke’s body where it lay, “for the raven and his brothers to feast on.”

Astounding.  Men, you are responsible for your beasts, and that means protection too if needed.  Don’t let them out alone.  Carry large bore firearms with you.  Be prepared to shoot invaders, whether two-legged or four-legged.  Be men, not sheep.  I would never have waited to see if my dog came back home, but then I wouldn’t have sent him out alone either.

Better yet, extend the hunting season and send packs of dogs after the lions (or even set up in a deer stand and wait for the lions if you know they are scouting the area).  We’ll see who runs then.  A mountain lion may be fierce but is no match for a 45-70 round.

But I doubt that the hippies who moved in from California would allow something like that.  It’s just like the hippies to move into the bush and expect the .gov to make them safe.

Caught on video, the cat was “known to authorities” and even has a tracking collar.

Wildlife experts have confirmed that LA’s most well-known mountain lion, P-22, was the big cat that attacked and killed a dog on a leash near the Hollywood Reservoir earlier this month.

A Chihuahua named Piper was killed in the attack, but the family’s other dog survived.

They were able to make that determination using P-22’s GPS tracking collar and other information.

The National Park Service, which tracks and studies mountain lions in the region, said attacks on leashed pets are rare. The service is not aware of any other such attacks in the Los Angeles area and has only seen studies that have documented two other such incidents, one in Colorado and one elsewhere in Southern California.

They also generally do not attack humans and the service noted the person walking the dog was not harmed.

P-22 typically hunts prey animals such as deer and coyotes and recently killed a large buck in Griffith Park, officials say.

“In terms of this incident, there is no evidence that preying on pets is related to an increased chance of an attack on a person, either in mountain lions, or in other urban carnivores such as coyotes,” according to a post from the service’s Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. “Mountain lion attacks on humans are exceedingly rare, although they do occur.”

P-22 lives in Griffith Park and is estimated to be 12 years old. He is known as the most famous cat tracked in the Los Angeles area, making appearances in backyards and neighborhoods around Griffith Park and the Hollywood Hills.

It’ll start killing people soon.

News from the Northwest:

A Gresham woman killed in a suspected cougar attack near Mount Hood suffered a broken neck and had more than a dozen puncture wounds to the nape of her neck, records released this week show.

Those injuries — as well as wounds on Diana Bober’s hands — “appeared to be consistent with an animal attack,” staff in the Clackamas County medical examiner’s office determined, according to a state police report.

The 5-page report doesn’t list an official cause of death for Bober, 55, and it’s unclear why it’s missing. Her death is the state’s first confirmed fatal wild cougar attack.

Wildlife officials later shot and killed a female cougar they believe mauled Bober, based on all available evidence.

The new details emerged in Oregon State Police documents obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request.

Searchers found Bober, an avid outdoorswoman, on Sept. 10 in the Mount Hood National Forest, three days after out-of-state relatives reported her missing. They said they hadn’t heard from her since Aug. 29.

Her body was discovered about 300 feet off the Hunchback Trail and down a steep incline, the state police report shows. The area was about a mile from the Zigzag Ranger Station, where searchers first found Bober’s car.

State officials said her wounds indicated a wild cougar was responsible.

A hunt for the mountain lion began almost immediately. Officials set up multiple cameras along the Hunchback Trail in the area where Bober was found.

Three days later, on Sept. 14, a trail camera captured an image of a large cougar, state police records show.

“This appears to be a big cat,” Sgt. Todd Hoodenpyl wrote to Capt. Jeff Samuels and Trooper Casey Codding at 9:51 a.m. that day.

About six hours later, search dogs treed the cougar off the Hunchback Trail and it was shot and killed, according to state police.

They’re not warm and cuddly and friendly.  If you backpack or hike or mountain bike like I do, going solo is a risk.  I usually take partners, but sometimes don’t.  If you don’t, watch your six.

Always carry weapons and be prepared to use them with quick-access gear.  And a dog can alert you to things you won’t hear or see.

Via WoG, a cougar attack.

Authorities say a dead hiker whose body was recovered this week was likely killed by a cougar, marking the first fatal attack by a wild cougar in Oregon and the second in the Pacific Northwest this year. Search and rescue teams found the body of Diana Bober, 55, on Monday off a trail in the Mount Hood National Forest in Welches, about 40 miles southeast of Portland. Her body was several miles from where searchers found her car last week near a ranger station. Bober, an avid hiker who often trekked in the Mount Hood and Columbia River Gorge area, was last heard from by family and friends on Aug. 29, the AP reports. She was reported missing on Friday and it’s still unclear when she started her hike, said Sgt. Brian Jensen of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.

Her body had injuries consistent with a cougar attack and a medical examiner ruled out the possibility that she was mauled after she died of another cause, Jensen said.

The article title is amusing: “Unprecedented Event.”  David has something to say about that.

I’m reminded of another cougar attack on bikers in Washington.

A former Topekan was attacked and killed by a cougar Saturday in North Bend, Wash., while biking on a remote, dirt road.

SJ Brooks, who was known in Topeka as Sonja Brooks while attending Topeka High School, according to a yearbook, was with a friend when the attack occurred.

Brooks, who identified with the pronoun they, encountered a cougar, which began stalking the bikers during the ride. The cougar first attacked Brooks’ friend, Issac Sederbaum, after an attempt to scare off the cougar by swinging his bike at it. The cougar latched onto Sederbaum’s head and Brooks took off into the woods, according to The Associated Press.

The cougar then ran after Brooks and attacked them. Brooks was severely mauled and suffered wounds to the legs, head, face and neck, The Seattle Times reported.

I like this thing of identifying any way you want.  I’ve never really liked my name.  So I’d like my readers to know that henceforth, I identify as “Brutus Maximus, The Destroyer.”