Ep. 82: Killed by Cougars (feat. Petros Chrysafis)

In this episode, Ashley returns from her summer break and is joined once again by wildlife biologist Petros Chrysafis. The discussion spans recent tragic and heroic incidents in California, Washington, and Colorado, and provides practical tips on staying safe while recreating around mountaion lions/cougars/pumas/whatever you'd like to call them. Tune in for expert insights and community adaptation strategies aimed at promoting coexistence with these powerful predators.

You can find Petros at @pchrysafs on Twitter, and you can check out his business at predatordeterrence.org or contact him at [e-mail], and check out their Facebook page.


Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, check out our website GetOutAlivePodcast.com and join us on Patreon (where you can now follow us for free)!

Support the show for free by leaving a 5-star review wherever you're listening, or on GoodPods or Podchaser (where we can respond to your comments).

You can find Ashley @TheAngryOlogist on Twitter.

Thanks for listening!

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Welcome to episode eighty two of GetOut a Live, a bi weekly podcast
about in law tax, why theyhappen, and how we can avoid them.
I'm your host, Ashley, andfirst of all, thank you all
so much for being so patient withme as I took a break for the
summer, and also have to thankyou to those of you who take a
second to leave reviews for this podcast. I am now reading one each episode.

(00:34):
This episode's review is from m JoeSteinstra from Podchaser, a platform where
I can respond to your reviews,said, I love this podcast so much.
I listened to just the Zoo ofUs and the Great Horned Owl.
Episode brought me to listen to GetOut a Live. Thank god it did.
Ashley is an amazing storyteller and Nickis hilarious. It's always fun to
listen to them both. I alwayslisten to episodes right when they come out,

(00:56):
and I re listen to old episodesoften. My favorites are three,
fourteen, fifteen. I love whatyou guys are doing. Thank you for
your hard work, Thank you forthe review. Thank you all of you
who have left reviews and taking amoment of your time to do so.
And also thank you to all ofyou on Patreon who support the podcast financially,
and you may have seen on oursocial medias that you can also support

(01:18):
the pod and get some fun swagby getting a Ghetata Live koozie. So
if you're listening to this episode rightnow the week that it comes out,
you have until Friday, which Ibelieve is the twenty sixth, to pre
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a patron of ours, you canuse a code that I gave to you
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(01:41):
be sending those out early August,so if you pre order now, you'll
get it in about a week ortwo. All right, So all that
administrative stuff aside. Now let's getinto our episode, because it's a long
one. It's a good one.It is once again a more traditional get
out a live episode talking about acollection of stories. And this time I
switched it up because I invited anold guest back, and this time I'm

(02:04):
telling that guest stories and we're reviewingthem in real time as the guest hears
them. So without further ado,please enjoy this episode all about Mountain lions
with Petro's Chrisofus. Oh. Iam Petros Petros Chrisoffus. I am a
wildlife biologist that specializes in human wildlifeconflict in California. I am the owner

(02:30):
and sole member of Petator Detection andDeterrence in California Central Valley and the surrounding
mountains, and our mission is tohelp people co exist with wildlife using non
lethal means. Yeah. I justwander around deserts and forests and stuff like
that and help people that have somesort of conflict and how to mitigate it
properly. Yeah. So, Imean we last talked, like I said,

(02:53):
in twenty twenty one about mountain lions, and I was curious since then,
how has your work changed and whatare the types of Like has there
been a shift in the type ofconflicts that you've been seeing? How has
it changed. There's been a lotmore focus lately in well, we've had
a couple of wet years in California, so that's definitely changed a lot in
terms of where the scope of theconflict is because water is much more or

(03:16):
was much more widely available during thosetwo years. It used to be at
least when you put a camera ina watering area or an area that has
water in particular, you would seelivestock and mount lions exists in that space.
And now it's just kind of allover the place because there is a
lot more water available, so livestockdon't feel pressure to go into a particular

(03:38):
area, or if they have waterset out for them by ranchers, the
mount lions might not necessarily visit thatwater because there's more water available. So
they've become i would say, alot more unpredictable in terms of where to
find them in the area. Andit's weird because it used to be that
I was able to go to aranch or homestead and pinpoint areas that I

(04:00):
knew were definitely conflict hot spots becauseI'm like, yeah, you've got a
water tank here that a mountlon's goingto visit, or a creek or whatever.
And now it's becoming a little bitmore diverse in terms of hot spots
and where things might be. There'sbeen more and more urban cases or peri
urban cases, you know, peopleliving in cabins and stuff like that,

(04:23):
definitely noticing them more. I thinkit's also partially has to do with an
uptick in usage of the mountains,primarily because there's been more water, you
know, so some of the lakesand some of the areas the creeks that
were dry before now are getting visitors, so there's more people spotting them,
there's more rain camera footage. Butyeah, it's kind of become more i

(04:47):
would say, more slow, andmore geared towards humans and actual like humans
worrying about mount lions as opposed toa mountlon's killing livestock still happens, It's
always going to happen, but Ithink with the ability of people to move
their livestock to moral areas because ofthe water, especially because there's also much

(05:09):
more grass everywhere, so people canmove their sheep or their goats to areas
that weren't available before. It's justkind of changed from that perspective. So
more human focused than livestock focus now, I guess, yeah, because I
think the last time we talked,there was a lot of wildfires, and
I think one of the bigger takeawaysthat you had last time was that,

(05:30):
like, the wildfires are pushing themountain lions in areas they normally wouldn't go
to because they needed water and therewas none. So now it seems like
it's shifted and now they're not nearlyas reliable for you someone who's trying to
find them, which I'm sure canbe frustrating, but I mean, I
guess it's good that they're not inthose places as much anymore. I don't
know. Yeah, yeah, Solike this year again, we've had a

(05:53):
couple like, we've had a bunchof fires springing up this year, but
the last couple of years have beenreally knock on wood like relatively slow when
it comes to fires, and Ithink partially because there wasn't much to burn
anyway, right, But even so, the you know, wet water years,
cooler temperatures makes the ground a lotharder to spark up when there is

(06:14):
you know, lightning or stuff likethat. And the other thing as well
is that after a fire, youknow, there's a lot more primary vegetation
like grass, which deer tend tolike. So a lot of areas that
before deer weren't commonly found in becausethere wasn't a lot of forging to be
had now are foraging habitats. Andso it went from moutline seeking refuge and

(06:36):
food sources and water and areas thatthey weren't before because they were getting pushed
to fires to I think, obviouslyI don't have the data to support this.
This is just something that I'm seeingon the ground by myself, but
I think that they're going back tothose areas that burned up before because they're
especially now a really good source ofprey, you know, because there's a

(06:58):
lot more primary vegetation that deer do. Like yeah, so yeah, yeah,
And can I guess going off ofthat, can you give us an
update on in general, like themountain lion populations in California, Like,
how many do we have? Howare they doing? Yeah? Just last
year? Well, I guess it'sthis year right now. California Fishing Wildlife

(07:20):
did a rough estimate and I thinkthe population ranges between four thousand to six
thousand, with the more conservative approachof like four thousand, five hundred across
the whole state. It's a decentnumber. You know, mountlines here are
not there's no hunting season for them. You are not allowed to shoot a
mountaine unless if you have a depredationpermit or the state does it, or

(07:44):
the federal levels do it. Itdoes happen obviously, and I'm sure poaching
exists, but there's no official avenuesof like hunting. The population is that
a lot? I am not sure. The state is a pretty big state,
and you can find mountains and areasthat you wouldn't really think exist.
So I think it's less than Iwould have thought it was. I would

(08:07):
have thought they would be around tenthousand or so in the state, but
obviously that's their numbers. And theydo suffer from you know, as it
pops up all the time when theyuse the highway. Mortalities and those are
just the ones reported, and theyalso you know, poaching, a lot
of identicide impacts them, and sothose are practices that haven't really there's a

(08:31):
lot of push to change them.And obviously we have the new wildlife passages
that are being you know built upeverywhere, including the one in LA that
a lot of people advocated really reallyhard for. And so yes, and
obviously we lost iconic p twenty tworight the age of I believe thirteen.
So yeah, so those are thethings. It seems like someone else has

(08:52):
been spotted in these areas, andcouple of like backyard footages and stuff like
that. I don't know if it'sa resident line that's going to stay or
what. Yeah, but hey,you know, like the famous Jurassic Park
Cote says like life will find away. Yeah it works. Yeah.
I was curious because, yeah,P twenty two with the infamous line we've
talked about before, but in California, I was curious, maybe with P

(09:15):
twenty two's passing, does it seemlike there was more advocacy for mountain lions
in the state of California. Yeah, I mean, you know, like
they he passed after the Wildlife passwas already a thing, right, the
structures and everything we're getting put intoplace. I think there's definitely he's still
the icon for the highway passes,for the wildlife corridors, and I think,

(09:39):
you know, as well as asa lot of advocacy for the use
of not using redenticides for that becauseit does it does impact every apex predator,
right, Yeah, and everything betweenthe actual micets themselves to everything over
So I think it's just I thinkthe mountain Lions continue to be that symbol

(10:00):
of like, hey, this iswhat can happen if you use it and
decide, you know, even ifyou hate the animals, it's not a
pretty fate. And so I thinkthat's definitely something that is used, not
manipulated or anything, but I thinkthat's just something that has been used to
show to people like, hey,you know, this is an impact of
your actions. Yeah. Other thanthat, I think it was just a

(10:22):
positive you know, and I think, you know, there's people that can
talk about B twenty two a lotmore than I have, that have been
way more involved in this, ButI think it was just from my perspective,
it was really positive to see somany people like actually mourning his passage,
you know, like he was clearlybeloved in the city of Los Angeles,
and even to the very end,he was one of those things it
was like an icon for the area. So yeah, yeah, I was

(10:46):
going to say I had seen anarticle from last month June that a mountain
lion was actually found dead on theVenture Freeway close to the construction of the
new Wildlife crossing, which is devastatingand also great showcase of why it's needed.
It's sad when that happens, andyou know, it's also just one
of the things that I tell peopleis like, that's the one that's been
reported. Yeah, you think abouthow many don't get reported for whatever reason,

(11:11):
right, and it's not just themajor highways. But yeah, it's
sad. But I guess from avery macro perspective like that, which usually
whild that biologists tend to take sometimes, is that at least its like a
suitable habitat that animals used to cross, right, Yeah, so hopefully that
crossing is going to reduce the deaths. So yeah, and I'm sure a
lot of work went into it before, Like it's not like they just randomly

(11:33):
picked a spot and said we're goingto do this. Of course, still,
you know, it's positive that mylines are going to use it.
It's sad that the evidence for itis a death right. Yeah, And
so I was seeing that it's estimatedto be completed by late twenty twenty five
or early twenty twenty six, andit's going to be the largest of its
kind in the nation. So I'mreally hoping that this is the thing that

(11:58):
makes it more popular and then youus, because it's so needed everywhere,
but especially there where there's so manypeople. Yeah, and you don't really
get a sense of of that particularhighway until you drive it too, you
can't, like yeah, and itjust like I've driven a couple of times
and I've thought about trying to getto one end of the highway, not
even across the whole thing, right, and I'm just like, yeah,

(12:22):
I die a thousand times, Likethere's no no ifs, so broughts about
it, like and mountains are fasterthan I am. Yeah. Yeah,
So it's good. It's good thatit's being done. Hopefully it'll encourage especially
you know if and I'm sure thatit's going to be done, they're going
to put cameras out to see whatcrosses and everything like that, and hopefully
that footage can kind of encourage waymore people to you know, either funded

(12:46):
or help funded or advocate for itor stuff like that. So or just
like slow down so you'll see things. Yeah, and you know, like
you see you see the ones fromthe under passes Washington and there's some really
interesting stuff you know popping up andwho uses it and what time they use
it and predation along those areas too. It's really cool. It's really it's

(13:09):
really interesting thing. Well, yeah, we saw that what was it two
years ago? Now, we sawthat video from an underpass of a coyote
and a badger hunting together. Yeah, so it's like things like that,
like we get the opportunity to seecool little wildlife friendships we would never see
before. So exactly. Oh allright, Well, this episode's going to
be a little different where of coursewe've had you on the pod before and

(13:31):
had questions for you about mount inlions, but this time I'm going to
tell you mountain lion stories and we'regoing to go over them in real time.
So we've got I believe I saidfour to do, and then we're
gonna end with some like mountain lionpet stuff, and of course we're gonna
once again go over ways that everyonecan stay safe a ouur mountain lions.
But I just want to reiterate atthe top, like we are so much

(13:52):
more of a threat to them thanthey are to us, and these are
not common occurrences, so just wewill all keep that in mind for pretty
much any animal we talked about beforewe get started. So the first attack
we're going to talk about actually happenedin your neck of the woods, which
is why I thought to talk toyou today. So on March twenty third
of this year, and you mayknow this story, so feel free at

(14:15):
the end to chime in if youhave any extra insight. But twenty one
year old tailor Robert Claude Brooks andhis eighteen year old brother Wyat Jay Charles
Brooks were shed hunting, which is, you know, when you're looking for
deer antler sheds in a remote areanear Georgetown. And they fished and hunted
together nearly every day, so it'snot like this was like a new activity

(14:35):
for them by any means. Theywere experienced outdoorsmen. So on this day,
it was around one pm and theywere walking along the edge of a
dirt road and as they walked,they noticed a mountain lion was stalking them.
They put their hands up and startedyelling at the mountain lion, but
it didn't stop following them, andat one point, because they were getting

(14:56):
desperate, they threw their backpack atit. Instead of being deterred by this,
the mountain lion charged and jumped atWyatt the younger brother's face, and
took him to the ground. Wyattwrestled with the mountain lion as tailan beat
it and continued screaming, and atone point Wyatt managed to get on top
of the mountain lion, but thecat started clawing at his midsection, so

(15:18):
he let go. At this point, the mountain lion broke away from Wyatt
and charged at Tailan, the olderbrother. It jumped and grabbed him by
the throat and took him to theground as well with a severely lacerated face.
Wyatt tried to beat the cat offof his brother, but couldn't stop
it, so he ran back totheir car to get cell service to call

(15:39):
for help. Unfortunately, help wasn'table to arrive in time to save Tailan,
and Wyatt was rushed to a hospitalwhere he received reconstructive surgery on his
face and neck. And in responseto this, some Fish Wildlife game wardens
were able to track down the mountainlion and euthanized it, and this was
the first fatal attack in Range Countysince two thousand and four, according to

(16:02):
Fish and Wildlife and Taylan, hisfamily said, enjoyed the outdoors playing guitar
and was known as quote a verykind and gentle soul, and in a
public statement, the family said,quote a brother is a friend given by
nature. These two brothers were drivenby nature. This was the first fatal

(16:22):
attack in California since two thousand andfour, so ten years, which I
mean isn't an insignificant Like that's notthat long ago. I don't know if
you know anything about the fatality beforethat, but I mean it seems like
this is extremely uncommon. I don'tknow if you know anything about that area,
but it was I think overall inhistorical records, it's been something like

(16:45):
maybe four or five fatalities in likethe last hundred years in California. So
yeah, they were like obviously,twenty year difference between the two is not
year ten. I know, Iknow, you get it's okay, someone
tells me twenty years ago and Istill think it's the eighties. Yeah,
but yeah, I know, likeEl Dorado County, I've been a couple

(17:07):
of times, not on cases,just to visit and stuff. It's more
high desert. I don't know ifthere's any more details released on the state
of the Mount Lion, but tome, that sounds like a very desperate
mount lion as opposed to one that'slike more aggressively hunting. Yeah, and
I couldn't find any more information onit either, I think because this was

(17:30):
more recent I couldn't find like ifthere was any cropsy or anything, or
if it was you know, normalso to speak. Yeah, it's my
understanding is, especially because it's probablystill under investigation, there's still a lot
of work to be done, Iwould assume on that. On that front,
obviously tragic, right, it's nota great way to go, right,

(17:51):
and it's not okay for this tohave happened. Wild animals are going
to be wild animals. Yeah,it's just the way it goes. It
sounds to me like they did prettymuch everything they could have done. Yeah,
right, short of like having afirearm or a pepper spray. I
say firearm, but like in thatsituation when your brother is tussling with a
mutlon, would you even shoot atit? Exactly? I guess technically a

(18:12):
gunshot to the ground might have scaredit away for a second. It just
seemed like it was a very determinedanimal. I usually I tell people most
of the times that I don't haveto worry a lot about mutlins because of
my structure, you know, likeI'm really big and technically speaking, like
most men tend to be on thebigger side of things, and so you

(18:36):
don't tend to have to worry somuch. But it's one of those things
where I kept reading it, I'mlike, I don't really know what I
would do. Yeah, I guessif you had bear spray, you would
just spray it. And if yourbrother gets spuried, I guess it's better
than killed. Yeah. And Ithink a lot of people have this misconception
with these attacks that these things lasta really long time, and they don't.

(19:00):
Right when I talk about it,I sometimes, depending on the crowd,
I sometimes joke about red dead redemption, yeah right, because especially like
red dead redemption too, you're likewalking in the woods and like you get
killed by cougar before you even havea chance to do anything about it.
Really, I know it's a joke, but it also is a very accurate
representation of animal attacks. Yes,right, a lot like when it happens

(19:22):
to you, your mind kind ofslows down, but from a bystander point
of view, it just happens sofast. I'm sure the whole thing was
like a one to two minute interaction. Yeah, and that was asulted,
right. And that's the thing.It's with cases like this, it's very
easy to be critical and say,like, oh, yeah, I would
have carried bear spray with me.I would have carried like I would have

(19:44):
pulled out my knife and all thesethings. And people ask me what you
would do. And I do havebear spray, and I do have an
air horn, and I do havea knife with me, and sometimes I
have a gun with me, Butlike having the mind to do all that
and to employ them correctly is adifferent topic together, right, Yeah,
And I think that that's kind ofwhat the California, like State Wildlife Department

(20:07):
said. They were like these theydidn't do anything wrong, they were traveling
together, they made a lot ofnoise, they threw something at it,
and it just was really determined,and I mean to be fair, So
the younger brother was attacked, broughtto the ground, and then it went
after his older brother, and sohe's trying to fight off a mountain lion
while he has like a lacerated faceafter himself being attacked, Like I can't
imagine, what do you do?You know? I think they did everything

(20:30):
they possibly could have, So itjust it really sucked. And I wish
we had more information about the mountainlion to get more contacts maybe, But
thankfully and all the other stories thatwe have to talk about, well maybe
not, thankfully, I don't know, you know what I mean. In
all the other stories we have totalk about today, we have more context
as to like what the condition ofthe mountain lion was, So I maybe
in the next two months it'll comeout more info since this was pretty recent.

(20:52):
But yeah, I think my maintakeaway is that I guess this is
like the shittiest thing that you canpossibly say in this situation. But like,
if you recreate in nature, thingslike this might happen, right sometimes,
And I tell people when I'm talkingto them, when I do outreach
and stuff, I'm like, sometimesit's a habituate animal. Sometimes it's an

(21:14):
animal that's starving. Sometimes it's rabies. Sometimes it's just an animal, right,
and there is nothing that you cando about it. We don't know.
For all we know there were cubstwo feet down, right, For
all we know it was starving orhat rabies or anything like that. Even
if we never find out the context, you also have to accept that sometimes
that sharing the landscape with wild animals, this is going to happen, right,

(21:37):
And I know we like a lotof attacks are a lot of media,
especially focus on the predators doing attacks, right, But this, this
is the thing that can happen toyou with moose, right, and moose
are like big giant cows, butyou spook them, they'll stomp you.
And if a moose stomps you,you're not going to have a fun time,

(21:57):
right, And even something like anelk or a deer can can do
severe damage to you if the rightconditions are met. And so like obviously
condolences to the family. It's justa weird and I hope it gets some
sort of closure, you know,with some sort of resemblance of it,
but it is. It's just somethingthat happens when when you create in the

(22:18):
wild. You know, you gohunting, you go fishing, you go
shit hunting, you just go hiking, and there's always a change, no
matter how minimal, that the conditionsare such that you know, you get
attacked by something. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, All right, let's move
on to our next story. So, actually, just a few months earlier,

(22:41):
on February seventeenth of this year,twenty twenty four, sixty year old
Kerrie mccorkyl was cycling within a groupof five other women northeast of Fall City,
Washington around twelve to fifty pm.There were three people in the front
and two others riding about two hundredfeet behind in the back, and the
group said that as they were riding, two mountain lions walked behind them,

(23:03):
and at the last second, oneof the mountain lions, a young male,
jumped and latched onto Carrie's face,bringing her to the ground, kicking
at her body with its back paws, so took her off of her bike.
The other members of Carrie's group beganattacking the mountain lion with rocks,
a stick, and tried cutting itsneck with a leatherman multitool. Meanwhile,

(23:23):
Carrie was trying to gouge the lion'seyes out and poke into its nose to
get it to release. The groupstayed at this for fifteen minutes and the
only reason the lion finally released Carrie'sface was because it was trying to reposition
its bike, and when it finallylet go, they trapped it under a

(23:44):
mountain bike and held it there untilWashington Department of Fish and Wildlife police arrived,
thankfully for them, because it waslike this was a more remote area.
An officer happened to be patrolling atthe time and was able to get
to the scene by one oh fivepm, so so this encounter happened around
twelve fifty got there by one offive, which is a pretty good response
time, and the young male lionwas euthanized by the department and they even

(24:10):
got a hound to try to trackdown the other mountain lion that had been
seen, but it was never found. Carrie had to undergo emergency surgery on
her jaw, but was sent homejust five days after the attack, and
there was a GoFundMe for her,and on the GoFundMe there's an incredible set
of pictures of her going through recovery, like post surgery and stuff, and

(24:30):
you can see exactly how swollen herface got and the side of her face
that was held onto by the mountainlion easily swelled up to twice its normal
size. And thankfully her goalfundme exceededall the goals. But like just seeing
the pictures, it is horrifying whathappened to her. But I don't have

(24:51):
any more contexts other than this wasa young male. But this kind of
seems like a opportunistic trying to goafter people that are moving. I don't
know, but thankfully she was ableto or is making a full recovery.
So I want to like, I'mgoing to take a side step here.
And so it's just one of thoseweird things. It might sound morbid,

(25:11):
and I'm really sorry if it does, but like if you think about it
from like just because we're biologists andyou know, sometimes morbid is really fascinating.
It's just one of those things wherelike how efficient these guys are?
Yeah, right, you think gettingscratched by your cat is bad, right,
try getting scratched by a cat that'slike a hundred times its weight.

(25:32):
I mean I'm probably not a hundred, but at least depending on your cat,
ten times its weight, right,and with claws that are like so
much bigger, and sometimes like mycat scratches me when I'm trying to pell
them and I'm like, ah,you fuck her, and like yeah,
hurst it last rates a lot,and you know, you get scars and
just try to imagine that times tenon your face. Yeah, as your

(25:55):
bicycle, so you're also getting roadrash from falling off your bike. Yeah,
I don't I don't know if theywere ever they were really released the
weight of the Munta lion or anythingof the sorts. I didn't see it.
I am. I am thinking thatit might be on the leaner side,
just because it was held under amountain bike exactly. And when they
said young, they don't have anage obviously, but young to me would

(26:17):
mean like under three years old orsomething. I guess I'm just thinking back
to all the male males that I'veever caught on camera, and I'm like,
there's no way even a group offive people can hold that thing under
a camera and not get hurt rightunder a bike, sorry, and not
get hurt. So I would imagineit's probably on the leaner side. But
it is. You know, mostof the tacks are joggers or bikers,

(26:41):
and it is the speed, it'sthe leniency. Sometimes the figure is lean,
right, and that just kind oftriggers a predator or respond. So
don't go biking in the woods kids, and don't go joggingly. No,
Again, it doesn't really sound likethey did anything wrong, right, If
there were a group, they werebiking, making lots of always probably by
talking, yeah, probably right,they hit it. She went for the

(27:03):
eyes and the nose, which isgreat tip right and go. Those are
the soft spots in an animal.I personally wouldn't have tried to trap it
under a mountain bike, even ifit was like young, not because of
the animal, but because I'm like, I'm not risking any more harm to
me. Yeah, but the contextobviously, if we don't know if it
was trying to run away, orif it was gearing up for another attack,

(27:25):
or what the context was. Somaybe that was the best decision.
You know, if it's an insistentanimal, just keep me it trapped if
you can works well. Well.I wonder if they also had the force
at the time to be like,we should get this tested for rabies,
you know what I mean? Imean possibly, I know that I always
do, but you know, theydid as much as they could do.
One of the things that people doask me sometimes is you carry your knife

(27:48):
for an animal attack. And that'sthe only thing that I will always really
say is that not unless if theanimal is on me. You know.
The only thing that I would reallytry and say is that if someone is
being attacked by an animal, tryand keep a distance, because if grabbing
a knife trying to get to thatanimal means that you might be next,
right well like at the first story. Yeah, yeah, And I think

(28:11):
that's the that's the only thing thatagain easy for someone to say who's not
in that heat of the moment,right trying to do whatever you can to
help your friend. If we werehiking in a mountline attacked you, I'd
probably try and stab it, right, even just saying don't do it.
That's what you would try and do, right, just because you think that
it would scare it. But ifyou have another option, I think throwing

(28:33):
rocks probably would have done just asmuch. Honestly, it sounds like the
second one wasn't found, and itsounds like there hasn't been any recurring incidents
since then, so that's good.Especially if there was two, we could
probably assume that one might have beena pre parent and one might have been
the juvenile. So it's possible thejuvenile was the one like, hey,
I'm going to test this out.We'll see how it goes. But it

(28:56):
was crazy to me that it stayedlatched onto her face for fifteen minutes,
and the only reason it was goingto stop despite being literally attacked by four
other adult human beings is that itwas like, Okay, I'm not killing
her by holding her jaw. Letme try to adjust, you'll probably move.
Yeah, they're persistent, you know, That's what they do. Cats,
especially once they get a hold oftheir prey. If they have a

(29:18):
good position, they're not really goingto let go until they've made a kill.
Sometimes people ask me about deer whistlesand if they would help, you
know, I don't think if deerwhistles even help deer, to be honest
with you, Yeah, I don'treally think it's a good investment. I
think an air horn might be enoughto give reprieve right, and I always

(29:40):
I'm always a huge advocate, primarilyalso because if you ever get lost,
it's a good way to be relocated, right, Yeah, carry an air
horn with you. I think blastingthat air horn in the mountainlin's face or
ears might have done something. Yeah, maybe have it one on your bike
if you're a mountain biker and you'reworried about this, attaching a horn to
your bike. Oh, I mean, if nothing something else, even if
it's not for animal attacks, ifyou ever get hurt or injured, you

(30:03):
know, like it travels a lotmore than a scream does. Yeah,
noise sometimes disturbs more than damage,because these animals are used to being bucked
around and kicked and stomped, right, and so like something unexpected to them
might be that. Yeah, makessense. That all being said, I'm

(30:25):
interested to hear your opinion on thenext attack. So this was from a
little bit ago. But Clint Larsonon Facebook suggested our next story that took
place in twenty nineteen, and hesuggested this like a while ago, so
I'm finally getting to it. Buton February fourth, twenty nineteen, thirty
one year old Travis Kaufman was runningon a trail at Horsetooth Mountain Park near

(30:48):
Fort Collins, Colorado. So onceagain someone running. He was an environmental
consultant who was from Arkansas and movedto Colorado five years before to get more
in his outdoor hobbies, which includedrunning and mountain biking, so two very
mountain lion preferred activities. But asTravis was running, he heard pine needles

(31:10):
rustle to the side of him,and he turned to see a small mountain
lion only ten feet away. Heput up his hands and screamed in an
attempt to scare the lion off,but it pounced at him, aiming for
his face, which is also apparentlya common occurrence happening in the past few
attacks we talked about. But becauseTravis had his hands up to block his

(31:32):
face, the mountain lion latched onhis left wrist instead and started clawing at
his face and legs. Travis triedto throw the mountain lion off of him,
but because it wouldn't let go,they were both sent tumbling down a
slope off the side of the trail. Travis at this time was five feet
tall and ten inches and at thetime he weighed one hundred and fifty to

(31:53):
one hundred and fifty five pounds,so he quoted that he was like a
puny guy, so I don't thinkthat's puny, but like he was basically
saying, like, I'm not abig burly guy, so you know,
it went after me. But hehas made The cat was only around fifty
pounds, and after falling down theslope, all that they could do was

(32:14):
wrestle, and at one point hewas able to pin the cat underneath him.
He tried stabbing the cat's neck withsticks, but they kept breaking,
so he grabbed a rock and triedbashing the cat on the head, but
that didn't work either, and itstill wouldn't let go of his wrist.
Eventually, he was able to shiftin a way where he could get one
leg up to the cat's neck andjust stepped on it. And he said

(32:37):
he was running on pure adrenaline atthis point and all he could imagine was
being stuck on this hillside with amountain lion gnawing on him, which he
said, quote which is a prettycreepy way to go. So Travis,
with his foot was able to suffocatethis mountain lion to death, and after
killing it, he had to stillrun a few miles to find help.

(33:01):
All the while he was paranoid thatthere was another mountain lion around that would
attack him as well, especially ifhe was in a compromised state. Thankfully,
though, he did not run intoanother mountain lion, and instead he
ran into a couple who ended uptaking him to the hospital. In the
end, he needed seventeen stitches alonghis cheek, six along the bridge of

(33:21):
his nose, two on his othercheek, accounting for more than twenty stitches
on his face alone. He neededa few stitches on his wrist, and
he also had puncture wounds on hislegs and neck, but those did not
require stitches. Initially, Travis didn'tcome forward with this story because he was
afraid that he wouldn't live up tothe hype and said, quote, like
I was saying earlier, this storyis bigger than my puny form. And

(33:45):
he also said he was really gratefulhe hadn't been wearing headphones, something that
we talked about when you were firsthere, Petros, because otherwise he never
would have heard the pie needles rustling, and never would have looked to see
what was coming, and probably wouldn'thave had time to put his hands up
to protect his face and throat.Wildlife officials went back to collect the body
of the mountain lion that Travis hadkilled, and it had been heavily scavenged

(34:07):
around the time of its death.A knee cropsy found that the mountain lion
killed was only around twenty four poundswhen knee cropsied, but that was likely
due to the heavy scavenging and alive, it likely would have been more between
thirty five to forty pounds, andthe veterinarians doing the necropsy estimated this mountain
lion only to be three to fourmonths old. And they referred to it

(34:30):
as a kitten, and it waslikely a male. The teeth marks on
the bones from scavenging, they assumedwas from other mountain lions, likely its
siblings. They also found abundant driedblood between the animals popads, as well
as around its nose and mouth,and it also had abrasions and bruising on
the top of its head, nose, and above the right eye, which
is consistent with Travis hitting it witha rock, and its larynx and trachea

(34:53):
also showed signs of significant injury consistentwith Travis suffocating it. Otherwise, this
male was healthy and young and showedno sign of disease. An official said
had this been a full grown adult, the outcome for Travis would have been
very different, and that this youngmountain lion still pose a serious threat to

(35:13):
him, as evident by the injurieshe sustained. So this one, to
me seems more of a clear likethis is a young mountain lion trying to
see what it can get away with, and it just ended horribly for this,
I mean for both of them,but especially the mountain lion ended up
with it dying. So I thinkfor me it reads that the mother died.

(35:35):
Really the cubs were stuck by themselves. Yeah, interesting, okay,
mostly because of the fact that,like I'm assuming the wildlife officials got to
the dead the dead mount lion quickrelatively fast, right, yeah, because
they would probably want to test itfor rabies. And so the fact that
like as soon as it died,it was scavenged by other mount lions.
I know that they do it.It's not like their cannibalism is really particularly

(36:00):
shy of a thing for them,but like the fact that it happened so
fast to me tells me that theywere hungry. The siblings were also duvenile
mounta lions, but they were sentback to a rehabilitation facility and the plan
was to send them back into thewild since then if their mother died,
Yeah, I think that would bethe case. I think young lions are
relatively curious, but they especially threemonths old, they sell the better benefit

(36:22):
of the mother being around, andfor the most part, they tend to
be hidden or low profiles, specificallyso they don't get predated on by either
other mountain lions or you know,bears or whatever might kill them. They
don't mention anything about them being starving, right, Yeah, the nekruptcy.
So I don't know if that's thecase. It's possible that the mother died

(36:45):
a couple of days ago and theyhaven't reached the point of like pure desperation,
right, or they had just startedlearning how to hunt, so they
were like, oh, this makessense. I remember when the story first
came out and there were in anydetails about the fact that it was like
a tiny mountain, and I waslike, really, And I looked at
it and I was like, thisguy beat up a mount lion, killed
a mountline with his foot, killeda loutline with his foot in his bare

(37:07):
hands, and everything. I'm like, I find it hard to believe because
I don't think I can kill amount lion, right. Hell, I
don't even think I could probably killa cub or a kitten, just because
I don't think I cannot, notbecause I feel bad for it, just
because I'm not really sure I could. But you say it, I'll say
it. Protect your vulnerable areas ifyou have that ability, And yeah,

(37:30):
the headphones are definitely a no goto me. It's interesting because I also
was reading a Black Country guide talkingabout how like blasting music could also have
that affect in you, and thatit might make it make you blind to
like animals approaching you because you obviouslythere's always a lot of music, but
you would think that ninety five percentof the animals would scatter, right,

(37:52):
Yeah, unless they're coming for you. Yeah, if he was talking mostly
about grizzlies and polar bears, ifthem correctly with your animals, that are
not very easily discouraged. But yeah, situational awareness being the key lesson,
right, it's good to react insuch a way like to protect your face,
to protect your neck. It's likeone of those things that I think

(38:14):
people need to understand more is yourhands and your feet are good. You
want to have them, right,but they are also the body parts that
you can they make do without andstill live. Right. But if I'm
outlying, does get a hold ofyour face, or does get a hold
of your neck, especially in thefact of your neck, there is very
little that can be done to saveyou at that point, right, assuming

(38:36):
that you're by yourself. As wefound out in the second story, they
just don't let go because they dohave that hold and they know they know
where to attack, right, theyare ambush hunters. They're cats, they
know what they're going for. They'renot just blindly going for a spot.
All of these cats in these storieswe've talked about have gone for the face
and neck area. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, we're not completely detached from

(38:58):
nature in that way. Yeah,I think that's exact. Sometimes the main
takeaway from this podcast is like,yeah, we like to think that there's
always something wrong with animals and that'swhy something happened, But that's sometimes it's
just that we are out there beingin nature like everything else. So yeah,
so let's get to our last attackstory on people and then we'll shift

(39:19):
to pets. But this was anotherhistory making attack that occurred in Washington.
So this was on May nineteenth andtwenty eighteen, thirty one year old Isaac
Cedarbaum and his friend thirty two yearold SJ. Brooks where mountain biking thirty
miles southeast of Seattle. As theywere biking on a remote dirt road,

(39:42):
a mountain lion began stalking them.They stopped, made themselves look big by
raising their bikes above their heads andyelling at the cougar, all things you
are advised to do if you're beingstalked by a mountain lion, which pretty
much everyone in this episode has,and the mountain lion went away briefly,
but came back and pounced at them. They fought it off, initially using

(40:04):
one of their bikes to hit it, and they were able to show it
away again. As the pair tooka moment to collect themselves and talk about
how crazy what just happened was,the mountain lion pounced on Isaac and latched
on to his head. The cougarshook him violently as Isaac tried to fight
it off, and the cougar onlylet go of him because his friend Sjay

(40:28):
ran away. The mountain lion chasedSjay down and tackled them to the ground.
This time, Isaac was the oneto run off to try to find
cell service and call for help.He was able to get service and call,
but when a passerby came around,he handed the phone off because he
was very injured and having a hardtime talking, and the passer by was
able to get help to where theywere. A King County Sheriff's deputy got

(40:52):
to the scene, and when hewas able to locate Sjay, they were
already deceased. But the cougar wasstill quote mauling the body. The sheriff
fired his gun at it and ittook off. Isaac was taken by helicopter
to a medical center in Seattle thatday, and hunting dogs were brought to
the scene and they tracked down thecougar, which was sitting in a tree

(41:14):
just fifty yards from where first responderswere tending to Sjay's body. The mountain
lion was a male estimated to bearound three to four years old, and
his body was sent to knee cropsy. In July of twenty eighteen, it
was concluded that there were no abnormalitiesfound no disease, leaving no obvious indication

(41:34):
of why the attack happened in thepast one hundred years. This was the
second time a person had been killedby a mountain lion in the state of
Washington, with the last fatality beforethat occurring in nineteen twenty four. This
attack was especially rare given that thepair had successfully scared the cat off twice
just for it to come back again, and a member of the state Fish
and Wildlife Department stated that they advisedpeople not to run and that es Ja

(41:59):
run while Isaac was being attacked likelytriggered the attack on them, but the
state rep also said, quote,we try to teach people to overcome their
base instinct. But my goodness,who is going to fault you for that?
Yeah? That's rough. Yeah,well, I mean they also both
ran, but like someone has to, you gotta get out of there.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like itwas hungry or starving. Yep. In

(42:22):
that situation. It sounds like theytried to do at least what they did
correctly a couple of times right andagain running away kind of what are you
going to do? Yeah, inthose situations, I wish there was a
way to run simulated scenarios to trainpeople in what they do right. Something

(42:42):
that I learned really like early,which I thought it was really interesting,
is that in Sweden they when youdid take your driver's license, they take
you into an ice rink and theyhave you drive the car around in an
ice rinkh just to know what it'slike to drive in icy conditions. That's
so smart and what you do.And I'm like, yeah, that's great,
And then in my head I waslike, I wish there was a
way to do this with like bearsand Mount lions in a way that is

(43:04):
safe. But I don't think thereis not even with like trained animals.
I think it's not a thing thatcan feasibly roll out to the general public.
There is a thing. There isn'ta program out there with bears where
they have a trained bear run atyou and there's a fence between you,
but they still have one run atyou, and you have like, you
know, fake bear spray that youhave to get out in time to spray,

(43:27):
and it teaches people like, thisis how fast these bears are,
This is how fast you need tobe, and it kind of like trains
people to get, you know,their equipment out in time. But I
totally get what you're saying, like, how do you prepare for an attack
by a cat whose whole thing isstealth and ambush? You know, Yeah,
I didn't even know about the bearthing. That's pretty cool, and
I'm glad that that's a thing.I know. They have the fake one
right that emulates the speed, Sothey have a cutout of a bear charge

(43:51):
at you, and it emulates likethis bear spray and stuff, and that's
cool, But the real animal isthe bigger deal. I think you have
to suppress so many instincts. I'vebeen bluffed charged by black bears a couple
of times, and it's just sucha thing that you need to like suppress
the instinct to run away and juststay there. And honestly, like,
if I'm being very honest to you, the first two times, I didn't
register what happened until after it happened, and so I didn't really like stand

(44:15):
by ground so much as like beinglike, oh, okay, I guess
I stood my ground, yeah,by accident. It's hard. It's really
difficult. It sounds like a persistentline. I think we're going to be
seeing a lot more out of thisin the future, and I think it's
partially got to do with recovering populations, more people recreating outdoors, right,

(44:38):
And as a biologist, yeah,like these animals have the fear of humans,
right, but not all of themdo, and the fear varies,
and it doesn't matter whether they're huntedor not. It's just happens. Some
animals are going to be bolder thanothers for whatever reason, they're going to
be more interested in humans. You'renot exactly in the mind of that animal
and what could possibly trigger it inany potential way to do what it does.

(45:01):
I would say the bikes triggered theinitial approach, but then they got
off the bikes and obviously stayed thereand fought it off and scared it off.
So like, all that to mejust tells me that this either was
a hungry lion it just hadn't losta lot of weight at that point,
or it was just determined to eatand kill at that point. It was
just like this is what I'm getting, This is what I'm going to get,

(45:22):
right, Yeah, I guess muchlike some humans are, like like
my wife's like, oh, I'mreally hungry. I could eat, but
then she'll just be like, we'regoing to go to dinner in three hours,
I'll wait, whereas I'm like,oh, I'm really hungry. I
have to eat right now, yes, right, Like I need food in
my stomach right now. So Iguess it could just very well be that
biological variety in these animals. DoI think it's happening like more frequently?

(45:49):
I guess. I just I don'tknow. I think if there's a partial
the news getting out more and morethan they are, social media bias,
Yeah, for sure, social mediabias a lot more ability to survive,
a lot more abilities to call forhelp, a lot more abilities for your
story to be believed as well.Yeah. Right. I read a book
about the gold mining prospects in California, and there's this guy that was like,

(46:13):
yeah, one day I was likemining gold in the river and a
wolverine attacked me and I had tobeat it in the head with a shovel
or whatever. I was reading itand I was like, well, probably
a badger. If it was abadger, wasn't really a wolverine? And
did you really beat it with ashovel? Is that what you're saying?
And so all these things because youdon't have a lot of proof. But
now we have the ability to recordour phones, other people have the ability

(46:35):
to vouch for you and all thatkind of stuff. We're less isolated as
a human race. Again, Ithink we just have to accept that as
part of nature, and we haveto accept that some animals are just going
to be less scared of humans,more brave. And if I had the
resources to do with the studies,I would, But I would also I'm
pretty sure place a heavy good beton the fact that like trails that are

(46:55):
more usually recreated might make four animalsthat are less scared of humans in the
long term, Yeah, just becausethey get exposed to them so much more.
Or it could be the other wayaround. Yeah, they don't see
people often enough. Yeah, andso they're not that scared. So it
could either be either or. AndI will say, if you can,

(47:16):
don't run away. It's the onething that I would definitely emphasize, try
and not run away, especially withthese animals that can close the speed gap
fast. Yeah. Because Yeah,I think definitely what he did running away
triggered the response and from a huntingperspective of them mount lyon. If we
were to anthropomorphize it a little bit, which this is just how I usually

(47:37):
try and get my trains a thoughtout. I imagine his thoughts were,
this guy's injured, He's not goinganywhere anytime soon. Let me get the
other one. Yeah, let meget the other one down, and then
I'll come back and finish this guyoff, right, which is what you
would see in a hunting a patternif possible. Right, It's like Fox
in the Henhouse syndrome, you knowexactly. Yeah, if you ever see

(47:58):
the syruplus killing situations. I havea couple of videos that are like really
really brutal, but like sometimes theyjust lash out in animals and they don't
necessarily kill one animal before going tothe other one. They just do as
much damage as they can and thentry and return and finish whatever they finish,
you know. Yeah, yeah,one hundred percent. So trying not
toronto if you can't, but whatdo you But no one's gonna blame you

(48:19):
if you do. Yeah, onehundred percent. So let's end with talking
about something that's probably way more commonthan them attacking people, and that's them
attacking pets. So if you checkour Facebook, I had posted a video
in May of a family in Washingtonand it's like their ring camera footage like
up their yard and they were outsidetheir yard having a barbecue. Some people
were like in the drive and washingsome cars, and two of their outdoor

(48:44):
cats ran towards the house with amountain lion directly behind them, and the
people jumped, one of them beinga really young kid, probably like seven
or eight years old, who raninto the house immediately so ran away,
but thankfully the mountain lion just lookedat them, and then one of the
outdoor cats had been hiding behind somethingand like jumped behind the mountain lion as
it was distracted for like two seconds, and then the mountain lion took off

(49:06):
after it again. So first ofall, keep your cat inside that way,
it's not going to lead predators backto your barbecue. But yeah,
so that is just one instance ofthis happening in Washington, which seems to
be having like a lot of mountloninteractions as well. But there was one
really drastic case of mounta lions takingpets that I really wanted to get into,

(49:28):
and it was in a town calledNederland in Colorado back in twenty twenty
two. The town has a Facebookgroup called the Nedheads, so maybe it's
Nederland, which I think is hilarious. But starting in April of twenty twenty
two, they made a map ofa recent string of mountain lion attacks on
dogs because that year, twenty threedogs had been attacked, stalked, killed,

(49:51):
or disappeared, with the greatest numberof reports that year occurring between November
fourteenth and December ninth. And duringthat period from November to December alone it
was only three weeks. Seven dogsdied, two had been stocked, and
one vanished, and one survived anattack, and people were speculating all kinds
of things, like it was onemountain lion serially killing dogs, it was

(50:15):
a pair, it was an entiregroup, like no one really knew what
was going on or how many mountainlions they had. But there were some
really troubling stories like one from Novemberthirtieth when the Franklin family who lived in
the Hurricane Hill neighborhood and they letout their eleven year old Shitzu Willow for
a potty break before bedtime and theyhad their outside light on. They let

(50:37):
her out and Willow quote vanished inthe blink of an eye, and the
family wrote on Facebook, quote,we found cougar tracks near her that we
chased desperately through the night for hoursto no avail. We've continued to search
hours and acres with no sign ofher. It looks like the lion,
myself and Willow were most likely totriangle just feet apart, with the lion

(50:58):
hidden from the snow tracks we saw. And then on October twenty seventh and
the Gamble Gulch neighborhood, which theyhave a great naming system in this place,
but in the Gamble Golch neighborhood.Aj Cozial's dog, Duke, a
ninety pound Bernese mountain dog mix,was led outside to go to the bathroom.

(51:20):
When Duke didn't return, Aj wassuspicious that something was wrong, but
it was dark, so he waiteduntil morning. When he went looking.
In the morning, he found Dukeon a hillside above his house dead.
He had claw marks on his hipsand neck, one of his shoulders hanging
off to the side, and halfthe skin on his face was torn off.

(51:42):
And then there was Zach Stansfield,who let out his dog Lilah,
a fifty pound Catahula lab mix,on December first. Zach went outside with
Lilah turned away for a moment,only to turn back and see the led
light on her collar off in thedistance being dragged away. He saw the
light go over the barbed wire fenceon his property and started sprinting towards her.

(52:07):
When he caught up, he sawa mountain lion holding Lilah by the
neck, and he started screaming atit, which actually made it release Lilah
and it started growling and hissing athim, but gave no chase or didn't
try to attack. When Zach wentafter Lilah, he rushed her to the
hospital, where she received ten stitchesand a drain in her abdomen, seven
stitches to close a big wound inthe back of her neck, and quote

(52:29):
a bunch more stitches scattered all around, twenty five total. But thankfully she
lived. And people who had livedin this town their whole lives said that
they'd let their dogs wander all thetime and this had never been a problem
with mountain lions before. In SamPeterson, Colorado Park and Wildlife's Boulder Self
District wildlife manager, so the guywho was managing this unit held a community

(52:52):
meeting at the Netherland Community Center inan attempt to teach people one hundred and
forty of them who arrived to listento him ways to coexist peacefully with mountain
lions. But obviously, many ofthe people there said that the advice came
too late for their pets, andthey wanted to know why CPW wasn't killing
or moving these mountain lions elsewhere.Sam Peterson said, in this wildlife management

(53:14):
unit there were two allowable mountain liontags per season, but no one had
utilized them since two thousand and five, so this area was seeing their highest
number of mountain lions in recent years. Sam also informed people about Colorado's statute
that differentiates personal end quote real property. This statute states that you can kill

(53:35):
wildlife that threatens your real property likeyour home, livestock, or vehicles,
but you can't kill wildlife that threatensyour personal property such as pets. So
CPW can trap or kill mountain lionsthat are killing your live stock, but
not your dog. And to befair, they did attempt to trap some
lions in the area that had beenstalking people that were walking dogs in a

(53:57):
leash, but they weren't successful andthere were multiple theories as to why the
attacks on pets had ramped up inthis time period, and some people thought
that the construction of the Gross ReservoirDamn expansion just south of Magnolia Road had
pushed the cougars out of their territoryinto this neighborhood. Some people thought that
the increased deer hunting by humans wasdwindling their natural food source. One retired

(54:20):
wildlife ball just thought that low earlywinter snowpack, which makes the walking on
the snow louder and chronic wasting diseasein the deer population could be the problem,
and some people just blamed habituation.Attacks died down in mid December of
that year, but on December twentysixth, Caroline Bennett opened her back door
to let out her Australian shepherd,and an adult mountain lion had been waiting

(54:43):
on their porch grabbed the dog rightas it walked out, and then leaped
off the porch into the night.So the next day, December twenty seventh,
that guy Sam Peterson I mentioned,went to a house that had been
experiencing a lot of line activity,like to the point where the lions were
kind of like casing the house andlike the owners could see the lions waiting
for their dogs, like around thetimes that they'd normally let their dogs out.

(55:06):
So Sam started playing sounds of dogsbarking in an attempt to get the
lions to come near them, becausehe had a beanbag gun and he was
going to shoot any approaching lion totry to deter them from being in the
area. But seven miles away aroundthe same time that night, Stephanie Ndlman
and her partner Phil Chappel were unloadingtheir car with their eighty pound husky,

(55:28):
malomeat mixed Coda and he was thedog was just sniffing around like ten feet
from them. Stephanie heard a loudand shrill scream from Coda and turned to
see a mountain lion twice his sizequote hugging him on the ground. She
ran at the cat, screaming,but with Coda in its paws, it
tucked and rolled into the road awayfrom her. So Phil grabbed a shovel

(55:52):
and started making as much noise ashe could, and finally the mountain lion
released Coda, but it did notgo far, just went under their cabin
with Phil only ten feet away screamingat it, and it continued to stare
at Coda, but eventually the cougardid walk away, but it only walked
four hundred yards up their neighbors drivewayand attacked their neighbor's dog, but this

(56:16):
time the neighbor shot and killed themountain lion. And although, like we
just talked about, it is illegalto do that, CPW didn't press charges
due to the quote totality of thecircumstances. And I did find the website
that they used to track the attacks, which is Wildlife Tracker Colorado dot com
and the last attack reported was onApril twenty third, twenty twenty three,

(56:38):
when a dog was taken off aporch and killed in sugar Loaf, which
is a town near Netherland, despitethe owners trying to scare it off.
And Sam did have some advice forpeople who were experiencing this problem on what
to do to protect their pets andtheir property. He said to remove thick
brush or tree limbs where cats canlie in wait, use motion detection in

(57:00):
floodlights, and loud music around ahome's exterior, yelling or singing when traveling
through the woods or feeding horses andgathering firewood, walk dogs on a leash,
keep pets and doors during prime mountainlion hunting times like dawn and dusk.
And they said if you have anencounter with a mountain lion, contact
cpw's Denver headquarters at three oh threetwo nine seven one one nine two on

(57:22):
weekdays from eight am to five pm. And if your encounter occurs outside those
hours, contact your local sheriff's office, which I will link. I will
put all this info in the episodedescription, But yeah, I hadn't heard
of another instance where like mountain lionswere serially killing dogs and approaching people to
kill dogs. I know P.Twenty two did it towards the end,

(57:44):
but this was like a very extremecircumstance. It seems, Yeah, this
is wild. I've never really heardabout this. I'm surprised flew under my
radar. That is like, youknow, horror levels of intensity right there.
Yeah, and say, someone whohas four dogs is scary to think
about that kind of thing. Mydogs is in the woods with me,

(58:06):
sniffing stuff and doing stuff, youknow. I mean, it's obviously an
isolated case, right, It's notlike it happens all the time. The
advice given to keep your dogs safeis good at solid advice. I'm very
surprised. Usually fifty pounds or higheris not something that mountain lions will usually
go for, unless if they're verydesperate. Yeah, it's kind of hard,

(58:28):
and they don't know if it's justone lion or multiple lions. I
would assume at this point, sinceone of them was shot and killed and
there's been more, it's probably more. It sounds like some sort of learned
behavior to me. Yeah, AndI'm wondering if it did start with like
a mother feet and kittens dogs orhunting dogs and teaching them how to hunt
dogs, and then it just kindof went from there. The down expansion

(58:50):
definitely played a role in moving thelions. I don't know if it made
them attack dogs, though, usuallywhen there's like a territorial shift, it
just usually ends up with some lineseither dying or leaving and then eventually dying.
So I'm very surprised to hear it, and it does suck. Right,
give me your pet on a leashand indoors if possible, is the

(59:13):
best option. Right, If youlive in an area where there are predators,
I would always advise, like openthe door, shine a flashlight across,
make sure, like and these areambush predators, so their job is
not to be seen. Right.I've had people who have approached me in
the past who say, like,look, according to my ring cameras,
I have a mountainline that checks insidemy doors and my house every every other

(59:35):
night or whatever, and they goby. Makes sense, right, I
mean, I look at my neighborhood. I'm like, I'm not lying,
wouldn't do it here. But ifit's like a house and then like a
mile away is another house, tothem. It's just part of a habitat,
right, And if you have catsscurring it out around in the middle
of the night, the animals aregonna get curious. So I usually suggest

(59:57):
is that I have like outdoor radios, and some of these ones are really
cool. You can program them tostart at a specific time, and so
I always tell people, like,if your dog is going out at six
am, usually I advise for moresunlight. But if your dog has to
go out at six am, whichis when you wake up, have a
radio with a podcast go off atlike five five point thirty, right,

(01:00:19):
or even like just fifteen minutes prior, have something go off that sounds like
human voices. Go out, checkthe yard first, like a scan with
a particularly strong flashlight, and thenlet your dog out. Right. It
minimizes, but it doesn't entirely reducethe chances of that happening. Clearly,
Like in this case, there waslike ten feet away from them, and
they ran up and grabbed the dogs, right, and stuff like that.

(01:00:40):
It's like an extreme case of thathappening. Obviously, yeahed injured animals will
do that, desperate animals will dothat, and sometimes just animals. Right,
you know, the food is agreat reinforcer, so if you get
away with doing it once or twice, you're gonna keep doing it. Dogs
don't always have the best survival skills, so it makes sense some of these

(01:01:05):
guys are just lovable idiots. Yep. I have two of them. Out
of the four dogs that I'm lookingright now, I think maybe two will
bite back in case of an attack. Haven't you used this podcast before to
scare away about lines like on around I have. I still do.
I still use Get Out Alive asa podcast, like as one of the
options for people. I'm like,here you go. It's what I usually

(01:01:27):
use things that I know people talkabout a lot. You know, there's
there's certain radio stations or podcasts thatdo talk, but then there's like musical
interludes and then they talk again andstuff like that, And I try and
keep it to the point where like, talk regularly and then different voices is
really important. Don't play the samething all the time and stuff like that
to prevent that habituation. So whatwe got to do is start switching up

(01:01:50):
our tone to voice and start talkingto the mountain lions directly, so it'd
be like, hey, if you'rea mountainlined listening to this, get out
of here, Get out. Ithink you talk to you enough different people
that it is is not very thatit gets fine, you know. Yeah,
God, I just like I'm tryingto imagine what it would be like
to be in that position. Youknow, No, and you know I
live here, So you're in Californiawhere you know you have these animals around

(01:02:12):
you, but like I live herein New England. We don't have them
here anymore, and we don't havewolves. Like the biggest things we have
are coyotes and bears. And Ilive like behind me is miles of woods.
I know that there's coyotes and bearsthere. I have a porch that
hasn't underneath. I let my dogsout my fenced in yard. I never
think, like I'll like, look, you know, once in the yard
before I let them out. Butlike, I can't imagine having to go

(01:02:32):
outside, look for a predator thatcould easily kill me, and then decide
if I'm going to let my dogsout. I can't imagine what it's like
having to live that life. SoI feel so bad for these people and
having to find your dog dead.Oh God, I can't cannot imagine,
you know, instances like this iswhat, in terms of perception, sets
you back ages. Yeah, thereare thousands of cities and thousands of towns

(01:02:57):
that live with mountainons amongst them,and you don't get instances like this,
right, But obviously this one makingthe news and existing is going to change
the perspective somewhat. It's tough,and I think the best thing you can
I don't know about carrying a gunagain, I don't know if I would
try and shoot them outline that hasa hold of my dog. Yeah,

(01:03:20):
I'm not that good of a shot, right, I am not that good
of a shot. I don't thinkI can do it. And the same
goes for like, you know,pepper spray and stuff like that. Dogs
are dogs, Like if you pepperspray them, they'll run away. If
you bear spray them, they'll probablyrun away, right, and then you
just lost your dog. Probably gonnaget eaten by a mountlon. Maybe so.
Tactics that are usually commonly used todeter lifestyle guardian dogs from getting killed,

(01:03:43):
and these are very state dependent becausesome of these could be illegal.
Right, but there are callers outthere that have spikes and there are little
I think there's little dog vests,Chihuahua vests with spikes, well post one
on Instagram. They're very silly.Some of these are not made from good
material, right, and so willeasily bend or whatever. There are options,

(01:04:06):
right, especially the collars with thespikes. It doesn't kill your dog,
It won't protect your dog one hundredpercent, but it does give it
an opportunity, protects the most vulnerablespaces. And that's that's reaching to the
extreme. I honestly would say putsome put some human voices on, get
out check it, try not togo walking with your dog, or try
not to let them out when it'sdusk or dawn. Yeah. Right,

(01:04:28):
but again, as we said priorto the podcast, is one hundred and
ten here now it's one hundred andfifteen the other day, Like when am
I going to walk my dogs?Right, it's either as soon as the
sun goes down or right before thesun comes up. Right. Yeah,
So you win some, you loosesome. I think just making enough noise,
singing, talking, keeping your peton the leak the only reason why
the leash is a good idea,even when they do stuff like come and

(01:04:50):
grab your dog from under your feet, right, is because you act as
another resistance, and that's really allthat there is when it comes to these
animal attacks, is you're trying tomake it as hard as possible for these
animals to kill you or take yourpet or whatever. So they decide,
I'm going to go somewhere else anddeal with it, and hopefully that somewhere

(01:05:11):
else is a natural resource except yourneighbor's dog, which is what happened in
this situation. Yeah, oh mygod, I know this is this is
bizarre one and it definitely feels likesome sort of learned behavior. To me.
It feels like some of them outlinesjust picked up that these are easy
prey. And the fact that youknow some of them were waiting until the
dogs were let out, yeah,just indicates to me like that this is

(01:05:32):
what they learned, right, Theylearned they were watching. I think like
when you say they learned and they'rewatching, people must have think like,
oh, they just sat down inthe house and watched it for days and
stalked it. And I don't thinkthat's what happened. I just think they
kind of learn In your head,you kind of pick up some of the
patterns that happen when a dog isgoing to be let out, right,
Yeah, especially in quiet communities,they probably hear the walking of the dog

(01:05:56):
and the person. They probably seesome lights turning on and they're like,
oh, this person is going towardsto do this, Right. Do I
think there was a mountain line postedin front of a house every day for
a week to find out right downthe dog's potty patterns? No? But
do I think they've picked up onsome environmental cues on what it's like for
humans to let their dogs out.Yes, and I think they were utilizing

(01:06:17):
them very very well. Yeah,so maybe that's another piece of advice,
like switch it up. He Yeah, It's possible that the mountain lions that
were doing this either learn from thatone mountainine being killed, like oh,
maybe we shouldn't do this anymore,or they naturally died or moved on,
like maybe more prey became available.But yeah, it does seem like that
pattern finally broke and I couldn't findany more information from that neighborhood specifically,

(01:06:40):
but hopefully things have calmed down.Hey, if you're anyone from that neighborhood,
reach out to Ashley. Right,if you're a nedhead. You let
me know. You know, Ithink I would be interested to see if
the tags were taken the past coupleof years and if that did some sort
of impact, right. Yeah,they said they were unutilized for a while
now before that happened thousand and five. Yeah. I'm not a huge proponent

(01:07:02):
of hunting is a solution to solveconflict. I think it causes more conflict
in a lot of situations than itdoes others, and I think it just
redirects specific conflicts to other people.Yeah, but I'm wondering in this case,
if there was some pressure put onthe lions, either a reduced population

(01:07:23):
in a fairly small area, right, which would definitely have an impact,
or if it was just enough tobe like, Okay, this area is
no good for me. There's peoplearound kicking around the woods shooting guns.
Like, even if you don't killthe lion, the noise itself like would
have been enough. Right. AndI don't know if part of the tags

(01:07:44):
allowed for hunting hounds, but ifyou if you ever had the opportunity to
look at what it's like to likehunt amount lion with hounds, very chaotic,
yeah, and it's stressful it's reallystressful for the animal itself, and
that association dog sparking is scary versusdogs barking is meal time might have made

(01:08:04):
a difference, very true. Iknow that that's one of the arguments that
hound masters hound hunters are using toreinstate hound hunting in California and other states,
that they banded or limited it.Man, I don't know. My
feelings are complicated. It's obviously usedfor research a lot, because it is

(01:08:25):
very useful to be able to treatthem outline safely, you know, shoot
anesthesia on it, recover it,take it down, collar it, and
all that good stuff. But alsoI don't really know how fair game it
is for the animal. It feelsreally stressful for all large chunk of it.
But I also do know having talkedto a lot of people that especially
hound people have a really huge appreciationfor the animal themselves. Like they are

(01:08:48):
if you look at any of theconservation stories, they're in the forefront for
trying to conserve the animals and tryingto limit you know, the take for
males and females and stuff like that. So maybe it's just a practice that
is gonna suck, but it's gonnahelp. Yeah, Like in a lot
of things with wildlife, you needsome nuance. Sometimes maybe it's a good

(01:09:10):
idea to let a bunch of dogsroam around the woods and bark and scare
mountains, because it might just teachthem don't kill dogs. Right, Yeah,
it's the beauty of wild life management. It is messy all the time
and nuanced all the time. Yeah, you have biology. Really, what
applies to one situation might not applyto another. Oh my god. Yeah,

(01:09:30):
I mean we just did a bonusepisode last month on gay and queer
animals and it's like, there isno nature does not fit in any box.
Ever, there's always exceptions. There'salways weird things. Yeah, no,
if boxes are boring. So onthat note, thank you so much
for doing this, Petros. Wherecan people you gosh? I am on
Twitter, I am under just peachrisoficemy handle. I am on Facebook.

(01:09:57):
You can go find Predator Detection andDeterrence on Facebook or the website itself.
It's been a while since it's beenupdated because life just takes a humble but
it's there. There's some there's alot of helpful tips there when it comes
to dealing with animals. And there'sgoing to be more uploaded sometime soon and
Instagram Chrisoffus Petros and there's email linksto those if any of you have any

(01:10:19):
issues that you want to address,and yeah, that's pretty much it cool.
Yeah, link those in the episodedescription so people can find you if
they need help. And yeah,thanks again, always a pleasure. Thank
you. All right, that wasepisode eighty two with Petros and me talking
about mountain lions once again. Andif you want more info on mountain lions

(01:10:39):
or just more info about Petros,check out the episode description to get links
to all of his socials. That'swhere you could also find links to our
website and all of our socials.And also if you check out our website,
I'm now trying to post blogs thatkind of summarize our episodes and give
you main points of the episode.So like, if you're struggling, for
example, with mountain lions in yourneighborhood or you're worried about them as you

(01:11:00):
go hiking, you can check outa blog post that summarizes everything for you
so you can read it whenever youneed. Thank you all so much for
listening. Thank you for your patience, your continued support, everything. I
hope you're all having a fantastic summer, and we'll see you in two weeks
with a new animal tax story votedon by your patrons. See you then,