On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:10:38 GMT, "tom" wrote:

Wow. What an experience. From how you describe it --- if you hadn't seen
it, there's agood chance you'd have wound up being dinner, eh? It actually
made a run at you --- amazing. Not many people can claim to have had a puma
make a run at them. Were there reports of other attacks on humans in that
area, do you know offhand? They usually get into a pattern of attacking
humans --- if they attack one person they usually can be counted on to do it
again.

The spot I was in was a wide spot in the road that people used as a
pull off I guess. I used to stop there because it was about half way
between a town named Gabbs that I worked in and Hawthorne, that was
the nearest town to Gabbs. At that spot, it's about 40 miles from any
houses in two directions and over 150 miles in the other two
directions. I didn't hear of any other attacks in that area, but there
are a bunch of range cattle in those types of areas. If one of the
ranchers had cattle taken by a cat, they bait it and kill the cat
within a couple days. Over the years, the ranchers have gotten cat
hunting down to a science.

Had I not seen the cat, I would have been cat crap the next day. It
still gives me the willies.

Well, from how Andrew describes his experience, I wonder if he also might
have wound up being dinner if the cat hadn't stepped on a twig and attracted
Andrew's attention to it --- he had a shotty right at hand and still it took
a couple rounds fired overhead to make it run away. Yeah, it's no
consolation that cougar attacks are rare --- if you're the one in a zillion
getting attacked, LOL.