"Animal Trackers in My Soup"

[EJ3]

... hang the flag...
View attachment 517540
in case the Fuller-brush man re-emerges soon.

I was being watched the other day mowing the lawn: I think (hope?) that it was waiting to see what would run from me and the mower so it could become lunch.

 

[Spkrdctr]

I was being watched the other day mowing the lawn: I think (hope?) that it was waiting to see what would run from me and the mower so it could become lunch.
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Wow, that is one cool cat. Beautiful.

 

[mhardy6647]

Good heavens!

 

[EJ3]

Good heavens!

Based on what I saw and took a picture of, I will confidently state that this statement that I found on the internet (the third sentence) regarding the Eastern United States is NOT true (at least not in the lowcountry of South Carolina, where I have lived since I was a couple months old [yes, I lived other places and traveled a lot but always came back to here {being at age 69 now, this is the only one that I have ever seen in the wild}):

Although cougars are bigger than some “big cats”, they are considered a small cat due to their ability to purr and not roar. Cougars have over 70 different names and have the largest range of any wild land animal in the Americas. Cougars were once prevalent in the eastern United States until their population was wiped out by hunters in the early 1900’s. There are no longer cougars east of the Mississippi River except for a small population down in the Florida Everglades, known as the Florida panther. Cougars are opportunistic hunters, meaning they will eat almost anything they come across, from birds and squirrels to deer.

Here are a few of the (over 80, according to the Guinness Book of World Records) names that people call them:

1. Cougar
2. Mountain lion
3. Puma
4. Panther
5. Catamount
6. Catamountain
7. Painter
8. Painter cat
9. Panthera (colloquial variant)
10. Ghost cat
11. Mountain cat
12. Cougar cat
13. Puma-mundi (rare/poetic)
14. Mountain panther
15. Florida panther (regional subspecies name)
16. Eastern cougar (historical/regional name)
17. Western cougar (regional designation)
18. American lion (archaic/rare)
19. Deer tiger (literal-translation folk name in some areas)
20. León (Spanish for lion; used in Latin America)
21. León montés (Spanish: mountain lion)
22. Puma yaguaroundi (mixed folk usage — not a taxonomic name)
23. León de montaña (Spanish regional variant)
24. Puma cougar (hybrid common-name usage)
25. Chiribiquete cat (localised indigenous reference in parts of South America)
26. Sucuri (regional folk name in some indigenous languages — used metaphorically)
27. Tigre de los llanos (vernacular in some South American plains regions)
28. León del norte / León del sur (regional Spanish descriptors)
29. Manigordo (localized colloquial name in parts of Andean regions)
30. Yaguaré (indigenous-influenced variant in parts of South America)
31. Puma de montaña (Spanish descriptive form)
32. Puma concolor (scientific name used in many contexts)
33. Puma cougar (redundant compounded common name found in some texts)
34. Mountain king (poetic/local nickname)
35. Big cat (generic common reference)
36. Silver cat (rare poetic/local nickname)
37. Panthera concolor (misapplied classical-style name appearing in older literature)
38. Alcon (regional mythological-name usage in folklore)
39. Jaguareté (in some Guaraní-influenced Spanish usages, overlapped with jaguar; occasionally applied)
40. Yerba cat (local folk name in small communities)

 

[xanalog]

people call them:

First words that would come to my mind are:
1. Sh*t
2. D*ck
3. 911

 

[EJ3]

First words that would come to my mind are:
1. Sh*t
2. D*ck
3. 911

No cell signal there. The "road" is a 3 century old 2 track that cannot be traversed by (say a Subaru CrossTrek Wilderness Edition) at more than about 5 MPH.
Unless a Dept. of Natural Resources team happens to be near you, even if you were able to connect with a cell phone, you're looking at an hour response time.
Cougars are not interested in someone on a 72" (six feet [almost 2 meter]) decked 30 HP riding mower that is making all kinds of noise, snapping small, dead undergrowth and spitting it out from under the deck at 200 MPH.

Also: Attacks on humans are very rare, as cougar prey recognition is a learned behavior and they do not generally recognize humans as prey.
Not that it has never happened, but it happens way less than shark attacks on humans.
They are opportunistic ambush hunter's, for the most part. But, if you are within 60 feet (approx. 20 meters), you are within 3-4 of their jumps away. You might be the opportunity that they were looking for.
They are interested in whatever animal they can catch because the person on the mower just took the cover away for many other smaller animals.
And hoping that one of those animals will get scared and bolt out in the open to become lunch. The cougar just stayed about 50 feet away (about 7 & 1/2 meters) away, observing. When I parked the mower and went inside, 10 minutes later, it was as if I had seen a ghost. The cougar was gone & hasn't been spotted by me since (about 4-5 years ago). It's the only time in coming there since 1957 (a couple months after I was born) that I ever saw one out there.
The DNR says this about them:
DNR’s official position is that the Eastern Cougar is extinct in South Carolina.
Despite this, S.C. Department of Natural Resources spokesman Greg Lucas said the department gets at least one call a month from people claiming to have seen one of the big cats.
“In South Carolina and in the wildlife community, there is no debate” about the presence of cougars in the east, Lucas said. “There’s just no scientific documentation to back that up.”
Some accounts — from people in places like Travelers Rest and Simpsonville — involve only sightings. In others, the encounters are more direct, like the report from a U.S. Forest Service employee who said a big cat had chased him into the Chattooga River.
But Lucas says if there are big cats lurking in areas, he feels sure there would be more encounters, given the volume of deer hunting in the Carolinas. There’s also the matter of the absolute lack of any big cats being hit and killed by vehicles on our roads.
He points to Florida where, despite a known population of less than 200, several Florida panthers are killed every year by vehicles.
Instead, Lucas said the majority of sightings are likely misidentification of other animals like bears (we do have black ones), coyotes or large dogs. When there is a suspicion that some type of big cat has been spotted, he said the likeliest culprit is a western cougar that has escaped captivity as someone’s pet.
However: Based on evidence of some livestock kills, one knowledgeable Johns Islander believes there are Carolina panthers still here now.
DNR is ignoring many other's on the subject: "oh, you saw a Bobcat, it was a ghost" (it may as well have been, if not for the cell phone camera) or some other excuse because they don't want to admit that they are clueless. A typical government agency: behind the times on the reality of things.
And some people have caught them on trail cameras. And: Based on evidence of some livestock kills, one knowledgeable Johns Islander believes there are Carolina panthers still here now.
Bobcats are not even close to the same:

Southern bobcats stand about 16 to 22 inches at the shoulder and weigh 12 to 25 lbs. (A slight underestimate, I think perhaps as big as 25" at the shoulder and 35 lbs. (They are bigger than any Maine Coon Cat I've ever seen).
For those that have not seen some of my other posts that include a photo of the homes location: it is the last home on the power grid in it's area, the population density is less than 37 people per sq. mile (36.540/sq. mi [14.108/km2]) and here is a picture (with my red 2004 Chevy Silverado (true 2 wheel drive) truck (ground clearance, wheel placement [not getting one wheel in the wrong spot]) is the key to getting here: