Word: cats
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...explorers of the Americas once called the creature amigo del cristiano, friend of the Christian--an odd name for a lion. That beneficent image was probably owing to Native American beliefs in the beast's role in maintaining harmony between heaven and humankind. The Chickasaw called the feline "the cat of God." And for centuries, puma concolor (a.k.a. mountain lion, cougar, panther, catamount) avoided people. It was an elusive presence: a tail vanishing into the bush, a distant snarl, the rare but startling...
...through the viewfinder that her eight-year-old was upset. "I turned around and saw there was a big mountain lion getting ready to pounce," she said. Cooder drew her three girls behind her and pulled a pocketknife from her backpack. She waved the knife and screamed, but the cat kept running at her children, she says, "trying to cut them out of the herd like they were baby deer." After ducking under ledges while flailing at the cougar, Cooder and her children made it safely back into their...
...jump a fence into a neighboring yard. Animal-control officials killed the 97-lb. male and later discovered that it hadn't eaten in days. In other places, pumas invade yards to steal away dogs and other pets--or simply to cool off at the garden sprinkler. One big cat even wandered into a mall in Montecito, Calif. "The intensity of the sightings has increased," says Howard Quigley, a senior wildlife biologist and cougar expert at the Hornocker Wildlife Institute in Idaho. "We get phone calls every week...
...same time, the cat's population has increased, in California alone reaching an estimated 5,000, double the number in 1972. The population, once threatened by bounty hunters, is protected on the West Coast by state laws that ban the sport hunting of cougars or forbid the use of dogs to do so. And just as cougars began proliferating again, they were presented with alternative prey, such as pets and domesticated animals brought in by the growing human settlements...
Sure, I'm spending a lot more time programming and a lot less time watching Tiny Toons. But the cat still sleeps with me and complains piteously if the door to the closet is heartlessly left closed, I still stay up until all hours of the night playing Trivial Pursuit with my brother and my parents still complain that there's nothing that all of us will eat. Life is good...