The fact they're night hunters is what scares me the most. The thought of being stalked helpless in the dark is a maximum horror level. They're not known for attacking people often, but then again sharks don't attack that often (most are scared of humans) and look how much THOSE bastards terrify us.
At least with sharks they're easy to avoid. Big cats are pretty commonplace out West. If you have a small dog in the mountains, a good name might be cougar bait. They've been known to hop fences in the evenings and grab small dogs out of yards right in front of their owners.
This is a video that one of my developers took last year when he was driving up to a triathlon with his girlfriend. It was dusk, and this was a major road, and it was just sitting there staring at and stalking a herd of cows in the field right beside the road. It didn't give one shit about him or the car he was driving.
Calgary resident here. You will not find highway that is more worth the drive than the Icefields Parkway from Lake Louise to Jasper. Google maps says it a three hour trip, but plan for 4 with the stops and photos. I've lived in Western Canada for 8 years and hike regularly, and the only mountain goat and grizzly (thank god) sightings I've had was on this highway. If you can spare the time, take a day and night and head up to Jasper, rent a canoe and do some paddling on Malign Lake (Jasper SOurce for Sports stores their canoes on the lake shore so that makes it easy). I had the pleasure of canoing and camping on Malign over Labour Day weekend and it was something else. If time doesn't allow for such a diversion, consider a hike from the base of Lake Louise up to the Plain of Seven Glaciers teahouse http://banffandbeyond.com/plain-of-six-glaciers-the-other-tea-house-at-lake-louise/ . You'll see a side of Louise that most don't. Moderate hike of about 11 km roundtrip with about 400 m elevation gain.
Archer is so good. This is by far my favorite scene: Http://YouTube.com/3SW6Z In other news, this is pretty entertaining: I don't know how you leave out "Let off some steam, Bennett." But whatever.
I am glad that it included some Bruce Campbell, but disappointed because it did not include ENOUGH Bruce Campbell. Especially "Honey.........you got reeeeeal ugly." Now we need 100 lines AFTER the kill. You know, when the hero taunts the dead body? Arnie loved rubbing it in the face of corpses: "Stick Around" "You're luggage" (taunting a dead alligator) "SEE YOU AT THE PAHTAH RICHTAH!!!!! "When I told you to go screw yourself, I didn't mean literally"
I've had three wild cougar encounters so far, one in North Idaho, one in Montana and one in Washington. Two were while the cat and in the other case cats crossed to road, the North Idaho and Washington one. The third, the "cool one", was while through-hiking with some friends and our respective dogs in 2009. This cat just kept following us, getting treed by the dogs [even the lil' wirehaired standard dachshund with us loved it, while most of the people were pretty stressed as you can imagine] and making us have to wake up others to take a crap or pee to hold the gun or bear mace while someone dug a hole to crap into or peed in the brush. Finally, we loop around to Anaconda, where we got some friends to park our cars, and leave, and one of us, Jess, she swears she saw the cat just glancing at us before just melting back into the forest. Cougars, admittedly, don't terrify me as much as grizzly bears. Having to scare a grizzly bear out of an Alaskan Dumpster and having it act so nonchalant about it really made me realize I didn't scare him, he just decided to humor me. If he decided to not even hit me with a paw or bite me, and just ram me with his head or his shoulder, I could have been in terrible shape or dead. The Big Bear is, well, a big fuckin' bear. One of those AK grizzly bears, while I was up there but over in Nome, bit a huge piece out of a propane tank's piping system, blasting himself with hyper-cold propane and thus booking it into the wilderness. The guys inspected the damage and informed Crowley Maritime that the cause was "bear disturbance". So because no one in San Diego believes it, they send a guy up, who has trouble understanding why the fuck a bear was in town and biting at a propane storage and distribution tank. He looks at it, shrugs after drinking some coffee and says, "I had no idea bears would do that." The Nome guys thought it was hilarious. Black bears are kinda funny. They're still scary, but every encounter I've had with them they just want to get the hell away from you, mostly because I haven't gotten unlucky and met a hungry, pissed-off one. We've had them raid our camps while hunting or hiking, though, or just meander through them. If you have dogs with you, they generally are enough to see off a black bear. Best story I have about them is once a sow and two cubs broke into my friend's picnic supplies for when we got to Round Lake, and managed to eat all the Jell-O powder. Hence, on the hike back, we saw these funny-colored sprays of bear diarrhea everywhere, thanks to the Jell-O. I wonder how the bears felt about that. TL;DR carnivores are scary, but grizzly bears rank high on my "Oh shit." meter
This one is similar to what happened to a friend in Utah, a young female puma just up and killed a mule deer in front of the whole car while on the way to Bear Lake.
Yeah. He's just a wil kitty who wants to play. And has banana sized fangs and claws... who can backflip on a dime... jump 7 feet... insatiable hunger for flesh... I'm never going in the forest again. Fuck nature and everything in it. Edit, just 'cause:
See as a human with dominion over all animals. These kitties can suck the business end of my 44 magnum. BIIIIIIOOOOTCH!
Cats are fucking predators. Those clips freak me out. In other news, I have 6 days on and one day off before the Bruuuuuuuce concert with my aunt. Then I go back for 6 more days. She's flying in from Philly. I think I feel a cold coming on. But really I'm a pussy who doesn't have the balls to call in.
That looks like a black leopard ["panthers" can be either leopards or jaguars], but yeah, even the smaller "big" cats are scarily strong, determined and flexible carnivores who will dine on humans.
I was reading a book that I haven't got back to to finish yet, but it was about a hunter in the early 20th century taking out man eating leopards and tigers in India. Leopards are fucking nuts. Apparently once they get the taste for man flesh they'll break windows and knock doors down to get to you. And those fuckers are STRONG. They aren't very big, but they'll prance up and down a tree with a 300 lb zebra like it's nothing. One of the leopards racked up a ridiculous body count like 400. Was the fucking Joseph Stalin of Leopards. Allegedly anyway. What kind of sick shit do you people watch? And I think I might have to get started on this show tonight.
I don't know what it is about this time of year, but I listen to Lamb Lies Down on Broadway into A Trick of the Tail right through Wind and Wuthering and cap it off with Seconds Out.
Enough cougar talk, I think this thread could use something different. This is the place that turned me onto black and white lingerie photography. Something about it just works