But let’s not forget that a 40-pound mountain lion kitten is still a horrifying machine designed to kill and eat you.
On Feb. 14, trail runner Travis Kauffman publicly discussed his life-or-death fight with a mountain lion at a press conference in Fort Collins. Ten days earlier, Collins had gone one-on-one with the big cat when the juvenile mountain lion had stalked him during a run through the Horsetooth Mountain Open Space.
Kauffman, fearing for his life, fought and killed the cat “with his bare hands.”
“There was a point when I thought I could end up there and stay there,” he said.
For the average person, the reaction was probably: “Wow! A mountain lion! With his bare hands!” Because that is crazy, an absolutely not-normal, terrifying thing to happen to you combined with a stunning result. This is what a normal person would normally say when you tell them about a man killing a mountain lion without a gun or a knife.
For the person suffering from Acute Internet Poisoning, though, there were four questions that needed answering:
- How much mountain lion we talkin’ here buddy?
- Is this a viral marketing stunt, and, if so, how?
- How is this person going to reveal themselves to be a terrible person in the next 12 hours online?
- Dude looks like Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter. Something must be sketchy here.
Questions two and three seem to be invalid here. Questions one and four turned out to be related, because the results of a necropsy by Colorado Parks and Wildlife revealed that the mountain lion Kauffman asphyxiated in their trailside match was, in their carefully chosen words, “a kitten.”
The necropsy performed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife veterinarians in Fort Collins identified the lion as a “kitten’’ with a weight of 24 pounds. However, the animal was heavily scavenged and officials estimated the animal’s live weight was 35 to 40 pounds. The report listed the animal in “fair condition’’ with no diseases noted.
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife report praises Kauffman for doing what he had to do. It even goes out of its way to say he was completely justified in his actions, and still seems quite impressed he was able to fight and kill the cat.
They should be, because park rangers and vets already know that animals are terrifying in general at any weight. I once had a terrifying encounter with a Canada goose that had to weigh at most 15 pounds. He wanted the bread more than I did. I wanted to be away from a honking, flapping, avian murder-machine more than he wanted to be away from a screaming grown man.
We both won that day, the goose and I, when I ran away and dropped the bread. Who is to say my retreat from the scene was an indictment of my character? You, who have probably been run out of a living room by a pissed-off house cat at one point in your life, or recoiled at the snapping jaws of a pet dachshund? Because you tried to get overly familiar and pet a dog bred to hunt rats in tunnels, who therefore hate everything besides their owner? Because you forgot that dachshunds are basically homicide-sausages looking for a fight 24/7? Some of us never forget this, and that’s why we’re respected in the dachshund community.
The main point stands: Animals are terrifying, especially ones that eat garbage off the bottom of lakes and have no national loyalty to you as a fellow American. Canada geese, in general, can go to straight hell honking.
I see you, though, anonymous Colorado Parks and Wildlife employee. You didn’t have to put the word “kitten” in there. You didn’t, but you did, and I appreciate the gentle elbow to the cougar-strangling trail runner. Somewhere there’s a grizzled Coloradoan park ranger smiling to themselves quietly in their mountain office, drinking coffee, hitting send on the press release, and thinking: Come back when you fight a proper-sized cougar, Sparky.
In my mind this guy has an eyepatch he wears as a result of a scrap with a legendary mountain lion somewhere north of Telluride. The mountain lion’s name is Steve, and he and the park ranger came out of the fight with an understanding and a new respect for each other and their roles in the great tango we call Nature. They go fishing together on Thursdays when they can, but don’t say much, really. The silence of contented companionship and the poetry of the mountains is enough to speak for both of them.