I visited a friend in California a number of times while on work-related travel. Said friend would take me to spend time at his parents’ house, a couple of hours north of San Francisco. The property is 11 acres, with hilly countryside all around. It was beautiful and magical to me, so outside countryside I knew. I’m known for my love of nature and love of capturing what I see in images, so not long after arriving on the first day of my first visit, I was pointed to the trail that wraps around the perimeter of their property. “Watch out for rattlesnakes,” I was cautioned as I set out.
I had never seen a rattlesnake. Potential photo-op!
Off I went to check out this new world. There is a brief period of time each year here during which the landscape here is green, but most of the year, grasses are yellow and dry, contrasting with proof of life given by the blue oaks and oleander that are everywhere. While it might be dead, the grass still strikes me as beautiful, so when I saw one of the benches that was located along the trail sitting in tall golden grass, I started looking for a camera angle. I decided a low POV would be best, so, after checking for rattlesnakes and finding none, I sat in the grass and looked for my shot.
It was nice sitting there on that hot afternoon in this new world of tall golden grass and blue oak trees. I finally decided it was time to move on and stood up to continue my exploration. It was then that I saw it! As I was transitioning from seated to standing, motion in the corner of my eye caused me to look to my right. My camera was in my hand, yet I stood unable to move as I processed what I was seeing. Smaller than the deer that we had passed driving up the lane, bigger than the jackrabbit that I had seen as I got out of the car…my heart pounded, time slowed. If I had had the presence of mind to put my camera up to my face, I would have had a full frame shot of a cougar! Full frame! It was that close.
It was gorgeous! The beautiful face, the muscles rippling under the golden coat, I can still see it in my mind, in perfect profile. It ran right by me, down the hill and disappeared into the trees at the bottom. It was then that time resumed its normal pace and I recovered enough to start kicking myself about having missed an amazing photo opportunity. For a few seconds I entertained the notion of going down the hill to see if there was still the possibility of a good shot. I actually began to move my feet in that direction. Then sanity set back in: cougar, big cat, big teeth, wild, I’m by myself, I’m not going be be “that” idiot in a newspaper: “Canadian photographer killed while pursuing a cougar in California.”
Brain having kicked back in, I pondered options. If the cougar stayed in the trees, it was invisible and a possible danger. However, if it kept running, it would pass through the treed section and be in the clear as it continued running up the hill on the other side of the glen and maybe I could get a shot then. Not full frame, but a cougar nonetheless, and in an interesting environment. Turned out, this was a good guess, but it had changed direction just enough that I missed it when it initially broke cover and by the time I pointed my camera and found it in the lens, it was farther away and I basically ended up with some shots of a cat butt disappearing over a hill. But I have some shots of a wild cougar’s butt!
I returned to the house, looked at my friend and said, “So you warned me about rattlesnakes and you forgot to mention cougars?”
About the cougar running away from me: I’ve been on Vancouver Island enough to have heard the lectures about what to do when encountering cougars. Cougars usually attack from behind, but if you see one, you want to look as big as possible. While this particular encounter left me with an amazing image in my mind of an incredible animal, I can’t help but wonder if the cat had been stalking me when I was seated in the grass and it was me suddenly rising that startled it into running by me instead of at me. Kind of a chilling thought.
My friend’s mother put a lot of mystery pieces together when she heard about the cougar. The dogs had been acting oddly for a few weeks and she had been noticing some unfamiliar scat as she walked around. Yes, she’s that cool that she notices animal scat. It seems that the cougar might have been in the neighbourhood for at least a few weeks. After my encounter, no traces were seen of it again – on this property, anyway.
After this, I took at least one of the 3 family dogs with me during my frequent explorations of the amazing piece of paradise. It wasn’t until a visit a year later that I finally saw a rattlesnake.