Cougars Creep Into Suburbia

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:

Transcript

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:


On a June morning two years ago, David Hanawalt was hunched over a
flower bed in his back yard loosening the soil with a hand rake. He says
he caught something out of the corner of his eye moving toward him:


“I started to prepare myself because it seemed like a large dog that was
making a beeline for me.”


(Allen:)”As if it was going to jump on you?”


“Yeah. And as soon as I stood up and turned it veered off. And the way it
ran, the way it moved, and its ears, I swear it was a cat.”


The cat disappeared into a patch of brushy woods behind his
house. Hanawalt says he became more convinced it was a cougar when his wife, T, saw
a big cat with a long tail sauntering across a neighbor’s blacktop driveway.


“…And it was just walking up like this. Just walking up. And then it went
just right off into those woods. Casually. It wasn’t in any hurry.”


The creature’s nonchalance is what has people in this northern Michigan
neighborhood worried. Some of them have read David Baron’s book
Beast in the Garden. It recounts how people have built their houses in
foothills surrounding Boulder, Colorado, right into prime mountain lion
country, then they saw cougars coming into their yards, taking their dogs and cats.
Eventually, a cougar killed a high school boy when he was jogging on a
wooded trail outside Boulder.


There are significant differences between the situations in Colorado and
Michigan, but author David Baron says if people are seeing a cougar and
it’s not running away from them, and in fact begins to approach them, then
that can be a warning sign:


“That’s what was seen in Boulder in the years before there was a fatal
attack not too far from Boulder. That’s what was seen in Missoula,
Montana back in the late ’90s before a little boy was attacked who did
survive. But again, if there are multiple reports of what is clearly a cougar
in one neighborhood, it’s probably worth looking into.”


Back in the northern Michigan subdivision Patty Barrons lives in the
house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It backs right up to a stretch of woods.
She was walking up the street one early morning last August when she
spied a big cat heading into her back yard. She took off running for her
front door because she remembered she’d left her housecat on the back
deck:


“…And I ran through the house, and onto my deck and down the two steps.
And went, I can’t believe I did this, it’s so embarrassing but I went, shoo,
shoo.”


It didn’t shoo.


Instead, Barrons says, it turned and took two steps toward her. She took
two steps back onto the porch. Barrons describes the animal as
enormous. She says she and the big cat watched each other from a
distance of fifteen feet for about half a minute:


“The face when we looked at each other eye to eye I felt that I was looking
at, I mean I knew I was looking at a lion. I knew I was looking at a lion,
there was no doubt. It was very muscular. It never crouched down or
anything so I didn’t feel threatened. But it stared at me and then, um, it
turned and walked around my flower garden, behind the tennis courts
and kept going.”


Patty Barrons keeps a careful eye out when she takes her early morning
walks, and she won’t work in her garden in the early morning or
late evening hours anymore.


(Sound of model airplanes buzzing)


Next to her house is an open field where kids play soccer and neighbors
walk their dogs, and its where T Hanawalt’s sons fly the remote controlled
model airplanes they love to build, but she won’t let them go out by
themselves anymore:


“Day or night. I mean they used to run around this neighborhood and play
with all the children at night and we’re not doing that anymore. I just, I
can’t have that it’s too scary. In fact, I’m looking to move.”


State wildlife officials won’t come out to investigate unless there’s clear
evidence of what could be a cougar. That means a photo, a paw print,
maybe some scat or droppings from the animal.


The people in this neighborhood didn’t get any of that, but now they have
their cell phone cameras handy.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

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Cougar Warning Posted at Great Lakes National Park

Officials at a Great Lakes national park have posted notices on the hiking trails warning visitors that cougars have been sighted in the park. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

Officials at a Great Lakes national park have posted notices on the hiking trails warning visitors
that cougars have been sighted in the park. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich
reports:


Over the past year, more than a dozen cougar sightings were reported in or near Sleeping Bear
Dunes National Lakeshore. Senior Ranger Max Holden says after a cougar followed a volunteer
for 20 minutes, officials decided to post warnings.


“It says that cougars have been reported in this area and be cautious. Try not to run. It says do not
run, but I say try not to run. If you got small children, grab hold of them and pick
them up. If you got a dog with you, keep that on a leash. Try to keep cool and if approached,
wave your arms and shout and make yourself look big.”


Holden says it’s unlikely anyone would be attacked. In the past century, in all of North America,
there have been fewer than 100 attacks on humans by cougars.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Gretchen Millich.

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