It's a Jungle Out There

It could be called a jungle: often wet, usually damp, densely wooded with rough undergrowth, the expansive area across the street from my home would be a jungle, except that this is the temperate Pacific Northwest of America, not the steamy Tropics. So it is called a Park, a Nature Preserve. Not a setting in which one would expect a wild cougar to be prowling. But there have been four sightings so far this week of such an animal there and in the lane two or three blocks away.

The police have set up a barricade at the entrance to the park to keep people out. TV channels have their vans with huge satellite dishes and tall antennas parked along the street in front of my house. These are accompanied by SUV's with the camera crews and reporters. This morning a news helicopter noisily hovered overhead for some time.

Somewhere deep in the wilderness Park Rangers have set up a trap suitably baited with Pacific Northwest salmon and other meats. They are using special tracking dogs that face down large wild animals and chase them up a tree.

For a street that looks more rural than urban and where the only traffic is the occasional car or delivery van, this has been quite an exciting scene.

So far the cougar, if indeed there's one lurking there, has been elusive and the park is due to remain closed through the weekend.

I have a feeling that my doctor will make a note about my mental health in my chart when I tell him that I have not been taking my prescribed exercise walks in the park because there's a mountain lion out there.

One fierce fan of the Washington State University, whose football team is called The Cougars wrote in a newspaper today that he welcomed the cougar and hoped that it would devour all the Huskies around, the Huskies being the football team (and the fans) of the University of Washington, the arch rivals of the Cougars.

The park has been barricaded:


TV camera crews are camped out in front of my house:




Like being on an Urban Big Game Safari: