Cougar Update

My wife, the Comely and Buxom and Easily Terrified and Suddenly Ailurophobic Boudicca, found what appears to be a print. It looks like something with four big toes pressed into the soft mud as it was rising up and jumping into a run. It's roughly the size of my hand.

I do not have small hands.

Being that I'm taking this whole thing way too seriously, I got down on my hands and knees and looked around the print. I figured that, with it being spring and the beast's toes having sunk into the mud deeply enough to leave prints like that, there might be some hair.

I found two definite hairs, probably three, and three more things that could be hair or could be grass. We also took several pictures, with my hand and with a ruler in the picture for reference. See, watching all those episodes of MonsterQuest and reading Cryptomundo, where the hosts and experts always tell you to put down something for reference when photographing curious "evidence" have finally paid off.

None of the aforementioned puke was left on the patio. There's a...residue, for a lack of a better term. I did find what may be claw marks on the edge of the patio, three of them, not exactly evenly spaced. We photographed that as well. Could be anything from incriminating claw marks to the results of a mindless jackass and his mower.

I'll be calling the NC Wildlife offices tomorrow. Apparently, they're very interested in this sort of thing and may be open to my sighting report. A friend of mine at work sent me a link where someone else sighted a cougar in 2007 near Jordan Lake, which is south of Durham. Something's beginning to shape up here. That's four people who have seen three cats in three different areas.

I keep peering out my back window, hoping to see packs of feral beasts. So far, I've seen a red-bellied woodpecker for my troubles.

UPDATE to the Update: This morning, while staring out my kitchen window, I saw a red-shouldered hawk kill something by the stream and then carry it off. So, while the cougar has yet to reappear (if it ever will), my nature viewing pleasure continues to go on.

A Possible Julianne Moore Sighting

I was proud of myself last night. I finished up my computer game and got into bed at a fairly early hour. I nestled down and drifted off to the dreamworld where I cavorted with Lord Morpheus and Cain and Abel. *ahem*

Some time later, my wife crawled into bed and shook me awake. As I was shuffling off the last, clinging tendrils of sleep, she pulled my face over to hers so that she knew she had my full attention.

"I think I just a cougar," she informed me.

Now, being that it's me, my first question was "Did she have big tits?"

My wife, apparently frightened by the big cat that could have killed and eaten her, did not find this nearly as amusing as I did. Instead, she told me about how she pulled into the driveway and saw an animal stand up and bound away from the side yard. Now, we live in a fairly wooded area and we have a veritable shit-ton of deer in our yard on nearly a daily basis. It's not uncommon for a group of them to lay in the grass in our yard, especially at night. However, she swears it wasn't a deer because she got a good look at its haunches and its left shoulder area, as well as the profile of its head.

There were no tufts on the ears, the coat was a uniform, tawny color (no spots, striations or stripes), the head was feline, and--most importantly--it ran like a cat. Apparently, it bolted down the side yard, down to the stream that runs at the back of our property, and up the hill on the other side of the stream. At the top of the hill, the light popped on at the community pumphouse that provides water for the neighborhood.

Now, I'm definitely one to be skeptical in these situations. The only problem is, I've been watching shows and reading reports about how the cougar (or puma or panther or catamount or mountain lion...they're all the same animal) is making a move back east. They've been confirmed as far east as the Mississippi and up into Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. Sightings have occurred in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Tennessee, to name a few, but wildlife biologists--so called experts--refuse to acknowledge that these sightings are real. According to them, all these sightings are misidentified house cats.

Uh huh.

However, more to my wife's credit and what makes me believe her, is this story from Chapel Hill...a scant 12 miles from my house. Not only that, but Sunday afternoon while out playing with the kids in my yard, I found a pile of...vomit...from some animal on the patio to my outbuilding. Being that we have raccoons, possum, dogs and cats in the yard all the time, I didn't think anything of it until last night. Now, I'm not sure what it was from (and...it was a big pile). I left it, hoping the rain would wash it away or something else would eat it. Finally, the show MonsterQuest did a piece on the Beast of Bladenboro, which has also set some precedence for the presence of a cougar in North Carolina.

This morning, I went outside to look for any evidence that it was there. I found--maybe--a partial print from where it was laying in the grass. I gave the side yard a cursory glance all the way down to the stream, but I couldn't find anything. Also--predictably--the puke was gone. I think later, when I get home, I'm going to do a little better search. Hopefully I can find something. It would be awesome to be the one to help prove that the cougar is making a resurgence in North Carolina.

As an amusing aside, when I went out this morning to check for signs of the cougar, I had the shit scared out of me by a cat running from behind my wife's car. It was a fat, orange tabby cat, and he/she laid down next to one of the pine trees in my yard and watched me...menacingly. I did go back inside and make sure that she didn't see an orange tabby, but she's certain that it had no stripes. Plus, the animal ran away. The tabby cat took a couple of steps and then--in catlike fashion--demanded attention, milk and cheezburgers now.

A Terrifying Tale

I had me one of them there adventures last night.

There I was, sleeping soundly at three o'clock in the morning when, BANG BANG BANG...BANG rousted me from my sweet reveries. The Buxom and Comely and Easily Terrified Boudicca also rousted herself (most likely from some equally sweet reveries), and I immediately reached for my beatin' stick.

Now, a couple of months ago, I was upstairs at my computer, the wife was working, and I was typing away on a book. I had just finished a chapter or a paragraph or an adjective or something, and I leaned back to re-read what I had just crafted. That's when I heard a noise what sounded like the back storm door closing. No one should be coming in there, so I immediately went into defensive mode. I grabbed the only weapon at my disposal...which turned out to be a 12-lb dumbbell and crept downstairs to see if my home had been violated. Everything was safely locked up, and no one was around, so I chalked it up to my imagination. But, I decided that I needed a better weapon. Thus, the beatin' stick was born. It's about three feet of solid lumber, 1x1, with the end cut at an angle. It's probably not the most wicked looked thing in the world, but I figure it'll bust someone's scalp open, should I need it to.

Anyway, the wife checks on the kids, and it wasn't either of them that made the noise. So, that meant I had to investigate the downstairs. I crept down the stairs, all Scooby-Doo like. You could almost hear the "doot, doot, doooooooooo, doot-doo-doo" music going as I moved forward. My ears were pricked, listening for any repeating noises or noises of someone deciding they needed to escape, lest they met my wrath and the business end of my cudgel. I first checked the living room, where all the plastic bins that housed the Christmas decorations were stacked, thinking that the perp might have knocked over one of those as the sound was a bit "plasticky" (if you catch my drift). Nothing. I peeped the back door, to make sure it was locked. Still locked tight. I check the front door. Nothing doing. I scope the windows. Nothing. Everything is whole and unscathed.

Then I hear something upstairs. Footsteps. Oh, they're near my family. Time to die, perp!

Only, Boudicca slinks downstairs to tell me Cookie is going to the bathroom, and that I shouldn't run up the stairs, screaming like a battle-enraged, blue-faced warrior with designs on braining her. We together do another security sweep around the perimeter, and find nothing. We wonder if, perhaps, a bat or something flew into our nice, new, awesome window in the kitchen. Shrugging, we decide that's a distinct possibility. Outside lights are on, to scare away the bad guys. We return to bed. The wife turns on the closet light, to make people think that someone is up. The hounds are released. Ninjas stand at the four corners of the house, ready to strike.

The beatin' stick was replaced in its handy location next to my side of the bed. The wife makes me turn off my humidifier, so we can listen. And we do for the next thirty minutes. Every creak and groan of the house causes one or both of us to stir. I stare, wide-eyed, at the doorway to the kids bathroom, thinking it looks somewhat like a figure standing there, knife in hand, waiting for me to sleep. But, I keep my eyelids hooded. When he comes for me, I'll knock his head clean off.

Finally, the alarm goes off. I sit up, dragging my worthless ass out of the bed. Fatigue crushes me, weighing down on me. The night was filled with fitful sleep, tossing and turning, and more listening. Always listening. Always greeted with silence.

I strip down, shuffling naked to the bathroom. Pulling back the shower curtain, I find a bottle of body wash has fallen from the top of the shower and now rests quietly in the basin of the tub. Beside it, guiltily, is the suction-cup fastener to which the bottle had been affixed. Here is my perp. Here is the reason I spent the night wondering when they were coming for me, and could I get to them before they got to my kids.

I grabbed the stick and beat the hell out of the bottle. That'll show that motherfucker to mess with the likes of me.