Oh Boy!

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Oh Boy!

As mentioned before, we went on a family outing a few weekends ago.  While preparing for the outing, I was running around the yard, getting all of the gear I ended up not using.  I was headed around the back of the house - the area that Mrs. Hotel refers to as "the junk yard" (my area) and I stopped cold in my tracks.

I've seen a lot of tracks in my yard.  Fox, deer, elk, house cats, dogs, squirrel, ground squirrel.....the list goes on.  I'll add that most of the dogs in our area range from small to medium sized.  I can't remember ever seeing a large dog track in our yard.  To date, I have never seen a mountain lion track.  And I have looked.  Hard.

I came around the corner toward the junk yard and, as I said, I stopped cold.  Then I almost greased my drawers.  This is what I saw:

There have been sightings of smaller mountain lions in our community, but the bottom line is, with the Oompa-Loompas around, any cat could be a danger.  We do take precautions constantly.

I'm not a tracker.  For you fellas that are, you know what you're looking at.  Where I grew up in Maine, there were no big cats.  Lots of coyotes, but because there were no big cats, I did not learn to tell the difference between cats and dogs.  I dropped everything, ran inside and googled, "difference between large cat track and canine track."  Within a few moments, I was at ease.  For those of you who don't know, here is the difference between feline and canine tracks:

http://www.bear-tracker.com/

Now I know.  And as G.I Joe always said, "Knowing is half the battle."


Pax Domini Sit Semper Vobiscum,

Mike, Oscar, Hotel.....out.