Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

Two other points of agreement are: Rarely does any one under ordinary conditions see a lion; and just as rarely does one hear its call. Of the dozen or more times I have heard the screech of the lion, on three occasions there was a definite cause for the cry—on one a mother frantically sought her young, which had been carried off by a trapper; and twice the cry was a wail, in each instance given by the lion calling for its mate, recently slain by a hunter.

During the past thirty years I have investigated dozens of stories told of lions leaping upon travellers from cliffs or tree limbs, or of other stealthy attacks. When run down each of these proved to be an invention; in most cases not a lion or even lion track had been seen.

Two instances of lion attacks are worth mentioning. One night in California a lion leaped from a cliff, struck a man, knocked him down, and then ran away. Out of this incident have come numerous stories of lion ferocity. The lion was tracked, however, and the following day the pursuing hunter saw it crossing an opening. It suddenly clawed and hit at a boulder. Then, going on, it apparently ran into a tree, and fought that. As it started on the hunter shot it. This beast was badly emaciated, had a swollen face from an ulcerated tooth, and was nearly, if not entirely, blind.

Another instance apparently was of a weak-minded lion. As though to attack, it came toward a little ten-year-old girl in Idaho. She struck it over the head with a bridle she was carrying. Her brother hurried to the rescue with a willow fishing pole. Together they beat the lion off and escaped with a few bad scratches. Yet had this been a lion of average strength and braveness he must have killed or severely injured both.

The mountain lion rivals the shark, the devilfish, and the grizzly in being the cause of ferocious tales. The fact that he takes refuge on limbs as a place of lookout to watch for people or other objects, and that he frequently follows people for hours through the woods without their ever seeing him—and, I suppose, too, the very fact that he is so rarely seen—make him a sort of storm centre, as it were, for blood-curdling stories.

Through years I investigated plausible accounts of the ferocity of mountain lions. These investigations brought little information, but they did disclose the fact that there are a few types of lion tales which are told over and over again, with slight local variations. These tales commonly are without the slightest basis of fact. They are usually revamped by a clever writer, a frightened hunter, or an interesting story teller, as occasions offer. One of the commonest of the oft-told tales that have come to me through the years is as follows:

“Late Saturday evening, while Mr. and Mrs. Simpson were returning from the village through the woods, they were attacked by a half-starved mountain lion. The lion leaped out upon them from brush by the roadside and attempted to seize Mr. Simpson. Though an old man, he put up a fight, and at last beat off the lion with the butt of the buggy whip.”

Sometimes this is a family and the time of day is early morning. Sometimes the lion is ferocious instead of half-starved. Sometimes it is of enormous size. Once in a while he leaps from a cliff or an overhanging tree limb. Generally he chews and claws someone up pretty badly, and occasionally attempts to carry off one of the children.

Many times my letter addressed to one of the party attacked is returned unclaimed. Sometimes my letter to the postmaster or the sheriff of the locality is returned with the information: “No such party known.” Now and then I ask the sheriff, the postmaster, or the storekeeper some questions concerning this attack, and commonly their replies are: “It never happened”; “It’s a pipe dream”; “A pure fake”; or “Evidently whoever told you that story had one or two drinks too many.”

One day I came out of the woods in the rear of a saw-mill. I was making my way to the living room of the place, between logs and lumber piles. Right round the corner of a slab heap I caught sight of a mountain lion just as it leaped at me. It missed me intentionally, and at once wheeled and rose up to play with me. In the two or three seconds that elapsed between the time I had my first glimpse of it and when I realized it was a pet I had almost concluded that, after all, a lion may be a ferocious animal.