Egos gone mad!

There is plenty of cover and game in the eastern US. That means there’s a lot of vacant puma territory in the east – plenty of room for dispersing young adults. Therefore I don’t think that there will be a major problem with puma attacks on people in the East, at least not for awhile, because young cats can easily find game. The whole place is swarming with deer, groundhogs, and rabbits. Some areas such as eastern Kentucky have elk herds now and there are lots of wild pigs too, especially in the South. The odd cat here or there may jump a human, and those attacks make international headlines, but there are many documented instances of pumas following people for miles, apparently out of curiosity.

All the same, I am careful in the woods. The woods here are lovely and exuberant, mostly hardwoods like beech and “poplar” (tulip tree), interspersed with large swaths of pine and hemlock. They grow right down to the yards and roads. I’ve had coyotes snatch well-loved cats from the backyard while I gathered flowerpots from the front yard, in broad daylight in the middle of summer. The forests are beautiful and I have run these hills all my life, but I no longer go out into the woods alone. I love cats and I am glad that pumas are repopulating the East. Maybe they’ll eat some of the coyotes! But pumas are big, potentially dangerous predators, so developing the habits of caution and awareness in the woods is just good common sense.

It disgusts me that people who purport to be investigating eastern puma activity would fall to such childish infighting as this. It’s going to take volunteers, lots of volunteers – OBJECTIVE volunteers – to gather the evidence needed to prove the existence of pumas in the East. When these people begin to think they are the sole authorities on the subject their hubris gets in the way of their research.”Official” wildlife agents are spread too thin, and too busy with their other activities, to chase after will-o’the-wisps like pumas that don’t “officially” exist.

Puma tacks vary in size and shape due not only to differences in the cats themselves, but also due to such things as scars and injuries, as well as differences in the terrain where the tracks are found. Sure, some people probably make fake prints. But that doesn’t mean that all the tracks are faked. With a good, clear cat track made under favorable circumstances, a very experienced observer can sometimes tell whether it was a right paw or left paw. So what? Most cats do have two of each. And most prints are not made by pressing a tame captive puma’s paw into clay, but by living animals walking over natural surfaces, shifting their weight as they go. It would be convenient if wild pumas always placed their paws just so, to give the researcher nice clear textbook prints to study. But that’s not the way it works in the real world. Tracks vary.

These folks have got too much of their egos invested in this. When a puma is run over by a fan leaving Foxboro stadium, it will be an interesting news item, but Ho-hum, it’s not going to win anyone a Nobel prize.

This kind of Juvenile stuff happens everywhere.

Acting like a bunch of juveniles… grumble… mumble…

I’d like to know how exactly this little feud is furthering eastern Puma research?

What so special about a big cat not leaving the same type of print?

I went out just a few moments ago to check the Tabby prints in the snow. I couldn’t tell which was the right or left except by seeing the direction of the tracks.

I have a small dog. The difference in their tracks were the cat’s had no claw marks because he retracts his claws when he walks.

I’ve noticed that Bears and wolves and coyotes all leave claw marks too.

What do I know? I’m just a common folk from Indiana.