I can’t remember if I ever published this link.
I work in a retirement community and we have a lady who is a bit tightly wound. After a few mountain lion sightings earlier this year, she managed to get quoted and photographed in the SF Chronicle, who promptly put the photo up for alteration. She walks around with two air horns to scare away the lions, should they dare present themselves. It’s pretty funny. Some of the photos have expired, hence the question marks.
Yes, she is as … as she looks.
This one’s unaltered…
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2006/07/08/mn_rossmoor08_0017_kr.jpg
Well, I will have to look into those air horns. I have not heard of them. I have heard of those cougar sightings in California—how they ate some joggers—and also I read in a magazine about how one attacked a young girl in Washington state I think–just jumped out of a tree at her right in a regular neighborhood. Now we have had some cougar sightings in Iowa too. I am trying to be happy about this. I have already been huffed at by a deer and stared at a little assertively by a buck at a place I used to go watch birds (just for fun, not a serious bird watcher). I don’t think you have to be wound that tight to be worried about an animal attacking you. And then there were those stories about the raccoons in Washington State and there was just something on This American Life about a woman being attacked by a 30 pound raccoon—I just heard a bit of the program. I can’t understand why no one has mentioned carrying these air horns. They don’t hurt the animal, right? They just would scare it off? So couldn’t one take these on hikes if one were scared of bears?
Oh, that lady is from Rossmoor? That’s where my folks live.
Well, she rents a unit here but is hated for making the residents look so bad in the article. She is crazy. She brought in some snapshots of gopher piles and told us (the newspaper) that they were bear poop. All she needs are the tigers.
PM me, Cynth, if you feel so inclined.
Yet you never hear of mountain lions attacking bagpipers.
Cougars will usually only attack something small enough not to put up much of a fight. Maybe the occassional child. To attack a fully grown human adult would require an awful desparate cougar, but it has been known to happen, even to a person on horseback.
The air horn is a great idea, but you either have to carry it constantly, or risk asking the cougar (or bear, etc.) to wait while you fumble through your pack to find the damned thing. Bear bells usually work better in that you can wear them all the while you walk, giving plenty of advance notice of your presence (makes it hard to sneak up on anything, though). Bear bells are usually what is recommended in the national parks I’ve been to.
djm
Here’s what Ontario folks use their air horns for.
ROFLMAO at some of those entries… MrSquirrel, Barrump, SniperZERO, and FishOutaWater and a few others were hilarious ! 
How do you tell grizzly bear scat from black bear scat?
Grizzly bear scat has little bells in it!!! 
That’s what I thought. Having never heard of this site, we couldn’t believe it when we got it. The lady had just visited the newsroom with her “proof” and along comes this contest. There were more pics, as I mentioned, since expired, unfortunately.
I guess people have been carrying around these air horns for a long
time and I just didn’t realize it:
CLICK—>
Black bears take the time to pick the bells out first.
djm
Would that make them “jingle berries” ?
I’ve seen two “black panthers” here in the last thirty years. I never thought to be worried about them attacking me though. Hearing them is worse than seeing them. Talk about creepy. We heard one down in the holler behind our house about ten years ago. When we went outside to try to locate the source of the sound our three outside dogs couldn’t get closer to our feet and legs. They did their best to get right up under us. The sound scared them . I asked a vet I worked for at the time what would make the sound I described. She said nothing made a sound like that but a big cat (she had a lot of experience as a zoo vet so was very knowledgeable about more animals than most vets.) Not long after that was when we saw the “painter”.
That woman reminds me of a lady who use to bring her dog to the vet clinic where I use to work. She always wore a surgical mask and gloves whenever she entered the building. Germs, you know. I always wondered why she even had a germ ridden pet in her home if she was that paranoid.
Perhaps it was not a case of “all germs”, but specifically of “foreign germs”, as one might come into contact with in a vet clinic (?).
djm
I can’t get the link to load. Aside from that the website in question is another one of my main hangouts. Some of the best flamewars on the web, hilarious photoshop contests and interesting stories. If I post a news story here you can be sure I saw it there first.
PRICELESS!!!
