The Story of What Happened (Crime Scene Investigation)
(Just to let you know the stats., I am a PUG, a Toy breed of dog, I am about 13" tall [to the top of my shoulder] and I weigh 20 lbs; my owner is 5'4" and weighs 120 lbs; the cougar was approx. 1 year old and weighed around 50 lbs.)
At 7pm (still daylight) on Wednesday August 31st 2005, my owner came home from work and when she was walking up the front pathway she noticed there were about a dozen crows on the power line outside the house, squawking and cawing and making all kinds of noise. She looked over her shoulder, thinking "What is their problem? Is there a nest around here or something?". (Earlier this summer there was a raccoon up in a tree in the yard going after a crow's nest and the crows made the same amount of noise.) The crows obviously knew that the cougar was lurking around.
She came in the house and put my leash on me, then we went out the front door to go out in the yard. We had only been going out as far as the yard for walks since we had heard a few days earlier about a cougar sighting on the previous Friday (the cougar had tried to attack a small dog through a chain link fence around the corner). The crows were still there on the power line, cawing and squawking away. We walked out onto the front porch and down the steps to this cement pathway, and we were just at the end of it, about 15 feet from the front steps:
when my owner felt something brush against her left leg (this was the one and only swat that the cougar took, scratching both of us). She turned around to see a cougar standing only 2-3 feet away on the grass! She thought it was a big dog at first, it was brown and shaggy like a dog, but then she looked at it's face and realized it was the cougar that we had been hearing about! But we never thought we would run into it in the front yard !
This is our view of where the cougar was standing:
The cougar was standing, we could see her whole right side, her head was lowered and she was stalking me, she just kind of looked at my owner as if she was in the way. She wanted me! The cougar was between us and house, so going back up the pathway was not a safe option. It would have meant walking right by the cougar. So then we just stood there, wondering what to do next. The authorities always say to make yourself look big, don't run away or turn your back on the animal. All of this was going through my owner's mind. She yelled "Dad! Dad!" to try to get her father's attention (he was inside the house, but he didn't hear). She thought about trying to get to one of the vehicles in the driveway, but they were probably locked, so it wasn't worth the risk. She thought we might try to make it to the basement door (further over to the right of the house), but it may or may not have been locked too. We slowly backed away from the animal, stepped down the two steps to the driveway, facing and watching the cougar the entire time.
This is the view of our eventual escape route, to the right along the inside of the boat shed wall (the cougar was still over on the grass to the left) :
We slowly walked sideways along the inside of the open boat shed (it just has studs, no walls, so it is open to the other side), my owner just pulled me along closely on my leash. The cougar was watching us and we were watching her the whole time through the side of the shed, and she started to slowly follow the path we had taken down the two steps to the driveway. We made it to this opening in the side of the shed and made a dash for the stairs, and ran up onto the porch and into the front door of the house:
The cougar must have followed us into the shed, and she went to settle and crouch down under a table that is directly behind where Mylo and snuck through the wall (maybe that's where she had been hiding right before she snuck up behind us?). From the bedroom window directly above, we could see the cougar's hind end sticking out from under this table:
This is where she was crouching, and she stayed there while all the RCMP arrived (I had called the local Port Hardy RCMP detachment and they had contacted Conservation and dispatched officers to the scene). The RCMP officers stayed out on the street until the Conservation Officer arrived. That's when the cougar finally came out from under the table, when the CO started to approach from the street with his firearm. She just sat down right beside the table where she had been hiding, we got a really good look at her (she looked right us, we were watching from the porch), she was a beautiful cat. The CO then shot the cougar with a shotgun, hitting her above her right shoulder. She ran off, injured, into the back woods.
The CO called a hunter who had a cougar tracking dog and they started searching for the cougar. They searched until about 11:00pm, but it was raining and the dog lost the cougar's scent (thrown off by two domestic cat carcassess the cougar had in her den). They continued their search in the morning, and at about 10:30am they found the injured cougar under a log in the back woods and they put her down.
We felt sad for the cougar, even though she had tried to attack us. She was just hungry. But my owner and I feel very lucky to have gotten away with a few scratches. We will have a few scars (both visible and invisible) and a story to tell that not many people (or any Pugs!) have experienced.
At 7pm (still daylight) on Wednesday August 31st 2005, my owner came home from work and when she was walking up the front pathway she noticed there were about a dozen crows on the power line outside the house, squawking and cawing and making all kinds of noise. She looked over her shoulder, thinking "What is their problem? Is there a nest around here or something?". (Earlier this summer there was a raccoon up in a tree in the yard going after a crow's nest and the crows made the same amount of noise.) The crows obviously knew that the cougar was lurking around.
She came in the house and put my leash on me, then we went out the front door to go out in the yard. We had only been going out as far as the yard for walks since we had heard a few days earlier about a cougar sighting on the previous Friday (the cougar had tried to attack a small dog through a chain link fence around the corner). The crows were still there on the power line, cawing and squawking away. We walked out onto the front porch and down the steps to this cement pathway, and we were just at the end of it, about 15 feet from the front steps:
when my owner felt something brush against her left leg (this was the one and only swat that the cougar took, scratching both of us). She turned around to see a cougar standing only 2-3 feet away on the grass! She thought it was a big dog at first, it was brown and shaggy like a dog, but then she looked at it's face and realized it was the cougar that we had been hearing about! But we never thought we would run into it in the front yard !
This is our view of where the cougar was standing:
The cougar was standing, we could see her whole right side, her head was lowered and she was stalking me, she just kind of looked at my owner as if she was in the way. She wanted me! The cougar was between us and house, so going back up the pathway was not a safe option. It would have meant walking right by the cougar. So then we just stood there, wondering what to do next. The authorities always say to make yourself look big, don't run away or turn your back on the animal. All of this was going through my owner's mind. She yelled "Dad! Dad!" to try to get her father's attention (he was inside the house, but he didn't hear). She thought about trying to get to one of the vehicles in the driveway, but they were probably locked, so it wasn't worth the risk. She thought we might try to make it to the basement door (further over to the right of the house), but it may or may not have been locked too. We slowly backed away from the animal, stepped down the two steps to the driveway, facing and watching the cougar the entire time.
This is the view of our eventual escape route, to the right along the inside of the boat shed wall (the cougar was still over on the grass to the left) :
We slowly walked sideways along the inside of the open boat shed (it just has studs, no walls, so it is open to the other side), my owner just pulled me along closely on my leash. The cougar was watching us and we were watching her the whole time through the side of the shed, and she started to slowly follow the path we had taken down the two steps to the driveway. We made it to this opening in the side of the shed and made a dash for the stairs, and ran up onto the porch and into the front door of the house:
The cougar must have followed us into the shed, and she went to settle and crouch down under a table that is directly behind where Mylo and snuck through the wall (maybe that's where she had been hiding right before she snuck up behind us?). From the bedroom window directly above, we could see the cougar's hind end sticking out from under this table:
This is where she was crouching, and she stayed there while all the RCMP arrived (I had called the local Port Hardy RCMP detachment and they had contacted Conservation and dispatched officers to the scene). The RCMP officers stayed out on the street until the Conservation Officer arrived. That's when the cougar finally came out from under the table, when the CO started to approach from the street with his firearm. She just sat down right beside the table where she had been hiding, we got a really good look at her (she looked right us, we were watching from the porch), she was a beautiful cat. The CO then shot the cougar with a shotgun, hitting her above her right shoulder. She ran off, injured, into the back woods.
The CO called a hunter who had a cougar tracking dog and they started searching for the cougar. They searched until about 11:00pm, but it was raining and the dog lost the cougar's scent (thrown off by two domestic cat carcassess the cougar had in her den). They continued their search in the morning, and at about 10:30am they found the injured cougar under a log in the back woods and they put her down.
We felt sad for the cougar, even though she had tried to attack us. She was just hungry. But my owner and I feel very lucky to have gotten away with a few scratches. We will have a few scars (both visible and invisible) and a story to tell that not many people (or any Pugs!) have experienced.
posted by Mylo @ 10:02 AM
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