How to Act around Mountain Lions
Injuries and damages caused by mountain lion encounters are on the increase in several western states as the suburbs there move into mountain lion territory and as lions learn to hunt in the suburbs. For public safety, fish and wildlife officials suggest the following behavioral guidelines:
Do not stare at the lion. Do not shout. Do not turn your back and run away. Raise your arms. Look as big as possible. Walk sideways. Speak to the lion firmly, but quietly. Speak respectfully of their ancestors.
They can be charmed by tactics of evasion. If one stalks your children in the yard, act demented. Come out of the house hopping backwards. Gaze at the ground as if looking for an auto part. Eat your shirt. Stand on your head. If the lion roars, roar back.
Sometimes one will sink in its teeth, then stare to study your reaction. Make a sound like grass in the wind and it might fall asleep.
Do not agree or propose to play chess for your life like in that Bergman movie. They're not bad at chess and during the end-game they make up their own rules.
And more might be there, in disguise. Some lions inflate to the size of hills. Some compress to the size of beetles. Some replicate in the sound of canyons. Some gurgle like water, some sway like trees, some glide like birds. Some stand and point, like tourists.
They can pounce out of a disguise in an instant when they notice you. Or, they can be so absorbed with it that if you praise their skill, they might continue blending while you pass safely by
Do not address one as "Hey Mac" or "Yo Bud". Don't even think the "Here Kitty Kitty" line. These jokers receive the most chilling maulings. Lions do have a sense of humor, though, especially for accents and mime. Successful topics have included: what to do with haughty waiters, and wet anything.
Sometimes one will initiate a leaping and swatting kind of dance. Also there's a dance of veils involving thick air and dark whooshing sounds which leave the cat flopped over on its side, exhausted. These dances are harmless unless you try to join in.
Above all, don't cross a pregnant lion. She is as fierce as she is magnificent -- swaying her sway on her path like a whale swimming in air; breathing for five, thinking in quintuplicate; hunting and breaking necks to make milk; sparks forming under her fur as she electrifies her protective dome.
Threaten a lioness near birth and her eye will compact you like glass off your bones which she will then rattle against her belly to call out her cubs.
In cities, lions are identifiable by that fluid stride, poised between wacky speed and an imminent nap. They provoke birdstorms exploding like ukuleles in late afternoon park trees. They love to run beside the train. They've been leaping into athletes' bodies since before the Buddhas even thought of the Boston Celtics.
Some impoverished ones have been forced to feed their young with newspaper, which has produced malnourished violent shells, which haunt traffic intersections, urging humans with incoherent thoughts to step in front of a bus.
Attempts to exterminate them are not recommended. A lion that has been poisoned, for example, might dig underground, abandon its convulsing skeleton, and sock into you through your mouth. It will make you as rude as an x-ray and political, like oxygen. Your neighbors might try to set you on fire.
Don't set out traps for them, either. That trap might show up around the tire of your car, or the leg of your child. And if the trap gets a lion, the cruelty is so great that the victim is transformed.
The mind of a lion caught in a trap, shot, poisoned, or kept in a cage returns to the wild with a focus so intense that it is capable of warped disguises, abstract escapes, and boggling experiments with death.
Trap or shooting victims can coagulate out of power cables, bleeding and yowling right in front of you, killing you with a small machine which also tenderizes your meat
Caged lions return with an awesome capacity for observation. They can see your blood move. They can surround you like aluminum foil. They can chatter like dictators as they study your habits, penetrate your thoughts. They smell your fear as you empty out.
– J Richard Osborn (RO Hood)
From the chapbook Crève Coeur, Sacred Beverage Press, Venice, CA
Photo: Puma, Cougar Portrait, by Kwadrat, Shutterstock 530145082