The Cougar

The Cougar
Originally uploaded by Cgilden58

Beautiful big cat!!

Other than zoos, the only encounters I have had with big cats is this:
(1) I came face to face with a Bob Cat when I lived in Georgia when I was about 10 or 12 years old. There were still a lot of woods around us, but they were developing a subdivision behind ours. I hated it. I was hoping we would always have wilderness around us. Anyway, I guess the Bob Cat was just as bewildered as I was upon meeting me!
We just stared at each other. I thought at first it was a very HUGE domesticated cat, lol! But I noticed the ear tufts and the tufts around its face and finally he turned and ran in the other direction and that's when I saw his bobbed tail!
We used to have a lot of them around where we lived when I was growing up, but development drove them away. So sad.
(2) I HEARD a Cougar or Mountain Lion roaring or "screaming" when we were camping in the Berkshire mountains of Western Massachusetts!! I think these beautiful cats and all wildlife deserve to have some room for them to still live wild. So sad when they end up in cages in zoos, etc. Man is developing so much, animals are running out of room to live and then the ultimate problem arises when they start encountering humans!
Now I kind of think I know how the Native Americans must have felt when the white man came along!!
This photo was taken by :Uploaded by Cgilden58 on 12 Sep 10, 6.23PM EDT ON FLICKR.