Cats In The Darkness

I'm visiting a friend who lived reasonably close to the sticks. Chatted for a time then exited his kitchen door and headed down the driveway towards my car.

From out of nowhere something makes the most godsawful screeeching, hissing, screaming noise, so I look up and see this big ass couger giving me the manson lamps about a third of the way up a nearby tree.

And I do mean nearby. The car was closer than the kitchen door so I run and jump inside. Dial my friends number...see, even the much hated cell phone has SOME legitimate purpose...he answers and of course doesn't believe a word I'm saying. But to humor me he walks outside, something I am shouting for him NOT to do, and it's screach-hiss-scream all over again so back in he goes.

15 minutes or thereabouts later, and this is some kind of worlds record, mind you, a sheriff's vehicle turns down the street, parks about 50' away from the action, and a deadringer for Jackie Gleason at the casting call for Smokey And The Bandit, squeezes himself out of the car.

"You the homeowner?" he whisper-shouts over to me. I answer in the negative and he reaches back inside the cruiser to shout something incomprehensible into his handset.

"Stay put there's no tellin' if you'll spook him," the sheriff shouts again, this time a little louder to be heard over the ever-escalating screach-hiss-scream. We all bide our time until another 10 minutes or so have gone by, and behind the Sheriff's car pulls what can only be referred to as a Circus-PD, for a good half dozen beefy types pour their way out. One of them is trying to get a two-sizes-too-small shooting jacket on over his uniform shirt while another is handing him a 30.06 while the 4 others are fingering their Glocks and the sheriff is shushing us all.

But something spooked him. The cougar, not the sheriff. Bigass cat then makes an olympian leap from tree to roof, amid much oooh'ing and ahh'ing I might add, and since full frontal spook has occured the sheriff sees no reason to shout-whisper anymore and yells over to Hermie to "Shoot the fuckin' thing, kid!"

"NOOOO!" comes a 200-decibel screach-hiss-scream from directly across the street, but it isn't the cougar's mommy, just the neighborhood Gladys Kravitz who wants to know why everyone cannot just dart the animal to sleep.

"This AIN'T Wild Kingdom," the sheriff retorts, "where you think we'd get a dart gun... dammit Hermie shoot the thing!"

Hermie looks like a capable young man, but he has not been trained to shoot a mountain lion off of a residential roof. Nevertheless, he bravely chambers a round, gets the still agitated cat in his sights, and BANG.

Say bye-bye to Direct TV. Hermie's 160 grain full metal jacket kills the Dish and off the roof it falls. My friend had been checking out the action from an upstairs window by now, and begins to shout down that he HOPES the sheriff didn't just shoot a hole in his roof. And the big cat, the big cat does something totally wierd.

He stops snarling and screaching and sticks his snout in the air while scratch-clicking his way sideways across the shingles.

"Hermie hit him?" one of the deputies asks no one in particular.

"Hit my ass, that's an old savvy cat, boy. Gunshot noise tells him a deer dropped dead closeby and he's lookin' to catch a scent."

Me? The Dish that would be a missile came so close to hitting my car that I stepped, carefully, outside to assess the damage.

Gladys is still shouting for mercy, my friend wants assurances that the would-be great white hunters won't suddenly open fire en masse and render his roof into a oversized Cheeses From Switzerland display, the 5 other deputies are telling Hermie precisely where to hit the cat to kill it...all with a different opinion of course...and the sheriff is coming close to snatching the hat from his head and stomping on it just like Jackie Gleason did in Smokey And The Bandit.

No fewer than 6 firearms are pointed at the mountain lion so something's gotta give, Hermie or no Hermie, when the cat suddenly stops his siddling.

"Hermieeeeee?" The sheriff whispers.

"I got him...I...got...him..." Hermie breathes back.

BANG-BOOM...CRACK

Nextdoor neighbor Mr. Addleberry pulls back his shotgun and sticks his head out the window to look down at the twitching but definitely done dancing cougar. The report from his 12 gauge caused Hermie to let off a round that for all we know is still orbitting the outskirts of Sioux City, Iowa. Gladys is in "Oh my Goooooood, oh myyyyyyyyyy Gooooddddddd" mode now, and 8 men on the ground look up at her, wondering if the wrong one of God's creatures was killed.

Mountain lions are making a comeback. The picture was taken by a midwesterner who had an uninvited late night visitor, and while it is a damned shame to take the life of so beautiful an animal, once a big cat overcomes his fears to get THAT close to human habitation, a man does what he must to protect kith and kin.