two-pot screamer dot com

From Slashdot – Reintroduce Megafauna to North America?

Re:Help me out here (Score:5, Interesting)
by (H)elix1 (231155) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {xileh.todhsals}> on Friday August 19, @01:15AM (#13347788)
(Last Journal: Sunday August 21, @08:02AM)

North America is no stranger to large, free roaming, wild cats. Most of the time, we get along just fine (read: leave each other alone).

Oh man… I was working as a cereal chemist in the summer/fall while I was on ’summer’ break between my freshman and sophomore year of university. One of the things was collecting grain samples during harvest since the U of MN started later than North Dakota State University.

So I was collecting barley and wheat samples where ND, SD, and MN meet. Talked to the farmer and he pointed out the grain bin I could snag a sample. Drive out, pull out my bags, look up… and see what looked like tiger… about 300 yards out. Scrambled for my camera, but it was gone by the time I had the lens off. (better judgment off) So after a few minutes of nothing I get out of the car, climb to the top of the bin, collect my samples, and look around. No tiger. A couple more stops and I would go home for the weekend.

Walking back to the car -*POW*- I find myself face down in the dirt with something on my back purring. The lowest rumble I’ve ever heard/felt. Role over and am face to face with a cougar. It let me up and it is still there purring like crazy. I scratched it behind the ears like a cat.

The farmer drives up and looks with a bit of surprise. He then tells me the cougar was a pet when it was young, but broke its leg when it slid off the kitchen table. It was declawed, but (amazingly) ended up getting to big for an indoor pet even with the stunted growth. They let it go on the property. The farmer tells me usually it hides from strangers, but one of its favorite games was pounce. He shows me. Turns his back on the cat, and watched that thing go into hunt mode. Took a bunch of pictures with the cat, loaded up my samples, and about five minutes down the road just stopped the car because I was shaking so bad. Nothing like almost finding yourself lower on the food chain. The stunned silence was something else when I called in and gave a status update on how things went. Well, I got jumped by a cougar today…

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2005 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Scrapbook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.