The War on Predators

There was no sound to alert me; no smell or shadow falling across the sunbeams. But something made me look up and ahead of me down the snowy trail. A massive adult male cougar, at least 130 pounds, stood about forty feet in front of me, his eyes locked on mine. Absolute power radiated from him. I could see his well-muscled shoulders twitching slightly as we both froze, taking each other in. He was framed in the center of the trail, snow-covered Ponderosa pines on either side of him, a perfect photo. I had my camera in my hands, but I didn’t move. I could hardly breathe. My dog, completely oblivious with his nose in a snowbank, was perhaps 15 feet from the cat. The cougar’s eyes flicked towards him, and I hurled myself forward through the snow towards my dog, desperate to pull him away from the predator. As soon as I moved, the cougar ghosted away through the trees. After clipping the leash on my blissfully unaware dog, I cautiously ventured over to where the cougar had been. His pawprints were perfectly preserved in the snow, the size of an adult’s spread hand. I was awestruck- how incredible to have glimpsed such a shadowy predator- and a bit shaken. I had seen something that not everyone gets to see; a ghost passing by. <a href="https://medium.com/@lizkoonce/the-war-on-predators-fb2b4d5aedda">Click Here</a>