I'd retired from guiding others into premier wilderness and begun writing about those adventures, and about the challenging land in which Jane and I dwell. The phone call came near the end of the previous decade:
"Roland, the reason I'm calling is to let you know the bear you write about--you know, the Dairy Queen Bear--well, he was at my place last night." (Uh-oh, is this early-morning caller a bear lover or a bear hater? Is he mad at me for writing about grizzlies, or is he fascinated by the animals?)
"How do you know it was that particular bear?"
"Big. Real big. A grizzly. Big hump. Hell of an animal." (Still no hint about how he feels toward the big bruins.)
"Did you actually see him?"
"Oh yes, in the yard light. He nosed around our garbage can. Ate some bird seed. He tore up a bird feeder, too." (Probably a bear hater.) The man continued: "But I don't mind. It was wonderful just to see him. He's been here before, you know, in years past. That's why I knew it was him. And why he's so special." (So he's on the bear's side.)
It happened that I'd just been advised by a Montana game warden that this particular bear had recently lost the collar that allowed the Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks to keep close tabs on an animal now becoming famous for dwelling in close proximity to humans and their nests. "Did he have a collar?"
"Not that I could see. But I've seen him when he did; it's the same bear. We live right on the his travel route. He's a beautiful animal." When I said nothing, the man added, "He's really shy around people, though. One time I flipped the yard light on and off and he really took off."
"And you live along the Swan River, near Ferndale?"
"Uh-huh." He hesitated when I asked why he called me, then said, "Because I know you care. I've read everything you've written about the bears. I learned a bunch from your stories. I had no idea they were out there. Then, because of your stories, we started paying attention. Everybody in this valley feels the same way. They're all rooting for the bears."
(Well, maybe not everybody. . . .) "Did he have ear tags?"
"I don't know. It was after dark, and he was moving in and out of the yard light. I didn't notice any."
I thanked the man for the phone call and asked him to keep me posted. Then I slammed the phone down, shouting, "Jane! Jane! Come listen to this--I've got news of Digger!" That the giant grizzly was still out there, still okay, still moving as a wraith amid the populated Swan Valley should rate as a wildlife miracle.
It was in 1992 that I wrote my first newspaper column about a radio collared grizzly inhabiting the environs of Bigfork. Then he was known by the nickname his initial trappers gave him: "Digger" (for his propensity to excavate while snared). But he soon graduated to a new nickname when he chose to spend two nights within a couple hundred yards of the Bigfork Dairy Queen--and nobody except radio monitors at Fish & Game Headquarters knew he was there. Magazine articles followed, and eventually a chapter in a book about the great grizzled beasts.
Digger, or the Dairy Queen Bear, was first trapped in 1989 as a three-year-old by biologists working Montana's long-running Swan Range Grizzly Study. When I received my phone call, the bear had to be on the far side of twelve. That a male grizzly lived so long in the wild is unusual. That he lived so long while spending much of his last half-dozen years amid the fleshpots of mankind is phenomenal.
It's also good.
KIDS, CATS, BEARS, AND LIVES
I've tried. But I simply cannot regard mountain lions in the same detached way I view grizzly bears. With the big ursids, I'll trust a modicum of understanding on my part, and prudence on theirs to lead to mutual survival. But with cougars, catamounts, pumas, mountain lions?
Is there something sinister about the cats? Grizzlies can certainly kill you; even eat you. But seldom does the brawny bruins pine after sunburned rib steaks wearing sunglasses. Cougars, on the other hand, rarely think of any creature, four-legged or two, as anything more than pot roasts on the hoof.
Understand, I'll take my chances with either. But at least I can expect Ursus arctos horribilis to be up front if I displease them. If I round a trail bend and surprise a grizzly sow with suckling cubs at her side I can expect things to grow sticky in a hurry. On the other hand, If I don't surprise her--if I give her a chance to avoid my bumbling self--odds are overwhelming that she'll move away without malice aforethought.
But there's little up front about the sneaky felines. They stalk their prey; they attack via surprise, from the rear. And in every case, a cougar attack on a human is never (as it can be with bears) preemptive, to quell a perceived threat. Instead, it's predatory--to eat. Always to eat.
Do I fear mountain lions? No, not especially. I'm a six-foot, two hundred-pound adult human male. I'm a predator myself who likely outweighs the cat. I hardly fit the big cats' prey-base mold. Kids do, however. And maybe that's what makes cougars seem especially sinister. At the time I first wrote a similar piece as a newspaper column, it was triggered by a lion attack on six-year-old Joey Wing at a campground near Dupuyer. The boy, it seems, spotted the cat watching him and shouted, "No! No!" Then the lad turned and ran. Apparently the boy's flight triggered the cat's predatory instinct. Fortunately, friends and family beat the attacking feline off.
There have been hundreds of cougar attacks on humans across America. Most were directed toward children, sometimes alone, but occasionally in a group. Surprisingly, given the big cats efficiency as a killing machine, not all attacks are fatal, probably because most attacking cats seem to be young and inexperienced, which leads many experts on Felis concolor to believe the creatures have expanded to fill their available habitat, requiring immature animals to establish territories near where humans congregate.
Contributing to the rising alarm are the youth and inexperience among we humans who may be viewed as survival food by hungry cats.
How, then, can parents prepare young children in proper response mechanisms when staring through a hedge row into the yellow slits of a mountain lion's eyes? Perhaps a suitable place to begin would be to avoid putting out feeding stations for deer (sure attractants for a hungry catamount) at the edges of our lawns. Whatever pleasure one might achieve in viewing the deer would be tragically offset by the loss of a child. Or even your poodle or your tabby mouser.
How, in fact, do we adults respond to a cougar sitting on the edge of an elementary schoolyard, watching kids at play? Do we do as folks at Longmont, Colorado who constructed an eight-foot chain-link fence around the playground?
Obviously Colorado's way is not Montana's way. Montana's way is to eliminate the cat. But just as oviously, as with Colorado people, Montanans would not choose to see mountain lions disappear from our landscape.
Next week? Another walk on the wild side.