THE GREAT WHITE BEAR

You should see the kangaroos in Canberra or the dongoes on Fraser Island...it shte way of nature.
 

I am shocked the dog did not go after the big cat. That would have been a crazy battle.
 

m c - I would LOVE to see the kangaroos and dingos. actually, I'd lve to see Australia period!

tj - I am amazed the cat backed down! It must've been a female, I doubt that a male would have.
 

Sounds like it's a lose/lose for the animals. We urbanize their habitat and push them into our streets...then we capture and kill them because they are on our turf and creating a problem.

As for the fight, I hate to sink to this level, but I woulda put $50 on the cat. :)
 

First of all, OMG cougars are the most gorgeous animals around, in my opinion. The effing hunters around here kill them because the cougars kill the deer and this pisses me off. Anyhow, I love cougars and it pains me when they are in peril, just as it pains me to hear of all the dead coyotes on the interstate.

But this urbanization is a huge problem and it's an old one in places like Vancouver, where the city just keeps expanding and the wildlife is pushed out. Their natural foraging grounds get trampled on so they forage in human inhabited areas. It's absolutely terrible if you ask me, and there is absolutely no foresight on the part of the human race with regards to this. The end result is two-fold: the animals (bears, cougars, deer, coyotes, whatever) either get killed by wildlife officials, or relocated (more often than not killed), and secondly, the people start to perceive wildlife and nature as dangerous and they start to believe that these animals are scary, which desensitizes them to killing the animals and makes them less sympathetic to how their expansion affects the wildlife. It's a vicious circle, and probably won't get any better.
 

OOh, I love Warren Dunes. I can't believe there's sightings around there. That is just crazy. People better keep better tabs on their small pets, that's for sure.

I agree with your assessment - animals are going to go where they find shelter and food. If we encroach on their habitat, we will encounter them. More people need to learn respect for wildlife.
 

We have mountain lions. Have you ever HEARD one? Ew. It sounds like a woman screaming. Creepy!
We also have bears, coyotes and fox.
I'm surprised we have so much deer!
 

mw - as my sister the former vet's assistant said;"The Rottie probably would have won, but you sure wouldn't want to see the vet bill afterwards!"

wc - you are right, they are beautiful.. my guess is they are migrating here because we have an over abundance of deer and coyotes, two of their favorite meals. And since coyotes thrive in urban areas, it makes sense the big cat's might wander close too.

laura - I agree completely with your assesment of Warren Dunes. Now iI can't wait to take Kipper back there and see if we can't spot a cat! Just makes what is just about perfect even more so!

sadie - nothing has ever awakened me quite like that cat did!
 

They're quite common in my neck of the woods, but this year they played havoc on ours and our neighbors barn kitties.
Not so much a problem in the winter because we keep the barn doors closed at night due to the weather but in the summer it's another situation.
It's simply too hot for the horses to shut the barn up and next thing you know we lost another puddy.
 

I heard about the cougar on the news.

There are now some coyotes in the suburbs. A girl I work with has family in an unincorporated part of DuPage County, and there are coyotes there. I would be so scared if I had a run-in with one.

Your camping story reminds me of something that happened to me. I was at girl scout camp. We were staying in tents, but they had wooden floors, and cots. There were 3 people per tent. I woke up in the middle of the night when I felt a wet nose on my face. It was dark, so I coudn't see very well, but given that we were in the woods, me and the other two girls in my tent thought it was a wolf. We started screaming. Later we found out it was a very tame dog. He lived on a farm near the camp and got away. He was a very friendly dog, as we all got to meet him later, but it was scary at the time.

I saw a possom in my neighborhood once. And Tim saw chickens. It's always odd to see animals you don't expect.
 

We've had spottings about 50 mi south of us. It seems that they come a little further north every year.
Several areas have had problems after people have turned their pet cougars loose.
Cougars are beautiful animals, but they can be hazardous to your health!
 

I saw three lynx in a tree once here in Ontario...looked like mama and two kittens...but I've never seen a mountain lion. I fly fish sometimes in grizzly country, but I've never seen one of those in the wild either.
 

Where I'm from, there has been cougar sitings each summer and they are usually not in secluded areas. I don't know what kind of critters they have where I live now. I guess I'll find out soon enough. :-P
 

The cat and the Rottie apparently had a several minute staredown before the cat decided that might be more dog than it really wanted to deal with.

that would be one ugly fight. One of the times I went hunting, almost hit a mountain lion with my car. I saw the thing close up and it was huge. Looked like it might have been 150 pounds.

Well, what are we doing about urban sprawl? As we tear away their habitats, of course they're gonna come into ours. But I think that's what you're getting at.
 

Then GWB, you have to see the Bunyips in our billabongs...but if you hear them run like bloody hell. No one who has ever seen one has lived to tell the tale...they remain a mystery.
 

A few years ago, there was a report on a local radio station of a puma in a suburb north of Toronto. After the initial report, there were several sitings. Parents were keeping their kids in. Search parties were organized to capture the beast and bring it to the wild. Well, it turns out it was a big fat black kitty cat, much to the embarassment of the radio station that started the fuss...... then there was the Grenadier Pond monster....some kind of prehistoric beast that was eating ducks in Grenadier Pond, which is in High Park in the west end of Toronto. They never found "grenny" but I heard that somebody did catch a huge pike in there not long after the sitings.....
 

I shuold have updated to tell of the horse mauling in Berrien county last week.

And they now have plaster casts of the cougar prints!
 

We need to stop having children. STOP BREEDING PEOPLE! It is the only way to protect what we have left. Did you know a species goes extinct every 24 hours? We are developing land because people take having children too lightly. Funny thing is, these parents worry about their children's futures but they don't give a crap about their children's children being able to know what nature really is all about. Those kids are going to have memories of hanging out at the local gas stations instead of running in fields. Let's see then, plop out kids, protect their education and what they go thru but because of them, it won't matter anyhow what kind of education they get, there won't be anywhere to use it. What about controlling people? Can't we shoot a few people instead of a few mountain lions? We need population control anyhow, we do it to everything else around us, why would it be so bad if we had to sacrifice our space for a change?
Look at the ivory-billed woodpecker. We saw the so-called-extinct birds once in the 1920's and a taxidermist decided to go shoot them because he wanted them for his collection. We have no respect for wildlife and we need to be stopped.