MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 8 (second half)

Mickey Mouse asleep in the tree

This lion had earned the name Mickey Mouse. We followed the hounds who were following the lion up Long Gulch over a couple or ridges and down a side gulch before he finally treed again. This time he picked a taller tree and climbed way up to the top. I darted him in the flank with a reduced dose since I figured he must have gotten some of the first one. We tied up the hounds and started throwing snowballs at him to try to get him to come down. He must have figured bailing out didn't help the first time so he wasn't going to try it again. He fell asleep high in the branches. Chuck volunteered to climb up and fetch him down. We didn't have the heavy tree climbers so with the rope looped over his shoulder Chuck had to make the most of each little branch and rough place on the trunk. The plan was to get the rope around the lion's chest and lower him to the ground but his chest was the part of his anatomy that was farthest away from Chuck. Another problem was that the branch didn't look like it could hold both a big lion and a big man and the big lion had first dibs. Chuck decided to try to lasso the rope around a hind leg while he stayed as close to the trunk as possible. Gray climbed up the hill to get a better vantage point to take a picture while I watched and fretted.

Chuck maneuvering the rope

Chuck successfully got the rope around the Mickey Mouse's foot and tried to ease him off the branch without the branch and both of them coming down. It was with a sigh of relief as I watched the lion descend toward the ground. Unfortunately my sigh was premature. The rope broke part way down and he tumbled the rest of the way like a sack of potatoes. No bones seemed to be broken but he was probably pretty bruised from the fall. The first dart was still hanging from his foreleg. The carbon dioxide charge that is supposed to go off on impact to shove the plunger down hadn't fired so Mickey Mouse had only gotten a wee dribble of the drug. 

He started to come out of the anesthesia before we were quite done. We had made our measurements and hurriedly took our samples then backed off to make sure he recovered. In a short while he got up and wove off down the hill. He moved like a drunk but not an injured one.

By this time it was quite dark so we hiked about 6 miles to the nearest rancher and called the local game warden for a ride back to camp. We returned the next day to get the truck.

Two days later we went hunting in a nearby area with two local guide-and-outfitters. It had snowed the day before so tracking conditions were pretty good. We found a track crossing the road and turned some of the hounds loose. After a short half-hour chase we heard them baying treed. When I peered up into the tree I could see a red nylon collar on the cat. Mickey Mouse stared defiantly down at us! He had traveled some 15 miles in the last couple of days so we knew he was going to be all right.

Mickey Mouse re-treed

MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 8 (first half)

New Season, New Strategy

"Failure is nothing more than a chance to revise your strategy."
                                                                - anonymous

 We revised several things before the start of the second season. We increased the study area size and shifted it south to lower elevations up and down the Arkansas River basin. We moved the two trailers to west of Canon City where we had access to a real toilet and shower. We changed houndsmen. We hunted for tracks from a truck rather than horseback. I had a new Cap-chur gun. We kept two essentials: checking the same parameters of the mountain lions and a woman leading the study.

I took necessary classes at C.S.U. during the fall semester but was ready to go hunting the day after New Year's Day. Tracking conditions didn't look good when we arrived in an almost snowless Canon City. 

The next day my advisor Ken and I drove in one truck and our new houndsman, Chuck, in another. Fortunately conditions improved somewhat as we drove up the Arkansas. After maneuvering around some twisty ranch roads Chuck walked down a gulch where some lion tracks had been seen before Christmas. He wanted to catch a lion! Alas there was no lion sign. We had coffee with the rancher and Don the houndsman who had helped us the previous year. We decided to give another area a try and drove east. We cut a fairly large  track crossing the road. Chuck turned a few of his hounds loose on the track and Don set some of his on the track too. While following the hounds we came across a kill but the track the hounds followed away from the kill were smaller than the ones they'd followed going in. They were probably fresher than the larger ones.

Lion kill

We were lucky that the area was well-riddled with ranch roads because Ken and I were able to drive to within about a quarter of a mile from where we could hear the hounds baying "treed". We hustled to help Chuck tie up the hounds nearby. I loaded the dart and aimed. I had neglected to sight in the new Cap-chur gun so the first shot immobilized the branch under the lion.

Darting Pinon Penny

The second shot flew true and the lion bailed out with no urging. Chuck put a leash on Pup, his black-and-tan hound with the most intelligence and followed the fast-disappearing lion. About 250 yards from the tree the drug took effect and the lion collapsed. 

The lion turned out to be a 95-pound female with beautiful adolescent eyes. I didn't know it at the time but mountain lion's eyes usually go from blue at birth to kind of a muddy brown color to golden at adulthood. I named this lion Pinon Penny. Her eyes had a ring of chocolate color around the pupils then a band of turquoise flecked with gold followed by an outer band of gold. Gorgeous! She probably had become independent not long before and was not yet the superb hunter she would later develop into. Her hunger may have driven her to investigate the old kill on her unlucky day.

Pinon Penny after processing

At one point Pup who was tied nearby started chewing on her tail but no damage was done. Jake, a scrappy old Walker with a kink in his tail where a bear bit him and a missing eye thanks to another bear, got loose but he ignored the immobilized lion. She was slow to recover after we had finished with all of her measurements and samples so Ken and I stayed with her for a couple more hours to make sure she was OK.

Wow! Two days into the season and we already had a lion under our belt! That evening Gray arrived on the bus and I recounted our hunt in great detail. I could just tell this was going to be a good season!

The next morning with Ken and Chuck in one truck and Gray and me in another we drove up Shelf Road towards Cripple Creek. The drive is beautiful but rugged in the summertime. In the winter it is still beautiful but treacherous in the snow. I cut my teeth driving it in four-wheel-drive in the winter. It must be approached with confidence, something Chuck had in abundance but something I had to learn quickly. It was good that there wasn't a lot of snow my first time.

We met Don and his wife Amy on the High Park Road. Gray and Ken took one truck and went east while Chuck and I followed by Don and his wife went toward Scratch Hill. Neither Ken nor Gray were as experienced as Chuck so it was no wonder that we found the first track. Chuck turned his hounds loose. He was our expert in all things to do with the hounds so when he told Don he couldn't use his hounds we had to go with it. Don was miffed. 

Pretty soon the confusion began. The hounds went up the draw around the hill and to the road from where we had chased Pinon Penny the day before. "Ah, fresh track" the hounds probably thought and took off with glee. We finally were able to contact Gray and Ken. They had been trying to use only Don's radio which wasn't compatible with the one we had and Don didn't have his turned on. They figured that out and switched. We left them with hurried instructions and took off after the hounds. We didn't want to tree Pinon Penny again so there was a mad scramble to round up the hounds. We couldn't find Boone, one of Chuck's brindle Plott hounds. Don and Amy had gone home when we had started rounding up the hounds. Ken, Gray and I went back to camp while Chuck hung around waiting for Boone. We hadn't gotten a lion but the day had still been exciting!

The next day we didn't have such a large entourage. Ken had gone back to C.S.U. and Amy had to go to work so she and Don weren't around. Gray and I took one truck and Chuck and the hounds the other. Near Gooseberry Creek off the Tarryall Road we found a deer kill. There were large mountain lion tracks all over the place! We circled the area with the hounds on leashes trying to find where the lion had left the kill. Chuck thought he had found it and turned three of his hounds loose. They soon scattered in different directions. Chuck and I tried to stay with Pup. Gray took off after a different hound. He soon lost the hound and went back to the truck. He drove up and down the road listening unsuccessfully for baying then decided to follow our tracks. 

Dixie baying "treed"

The hounds had paid attention to each other and when the going got rough on one track they would go to the hound that was still baying. Chuck and I finally caught up with them when they were milling around in a bit of a rough patch. 
"This lion is really Micky-Mousing around" Chuck complained.
We circled the area and found where the track left the vicinity and turned them loose again. Down we all went into Long Gulch then up over the ridge again. I was getting pretty tired when we heard the hounds baying "treed". 

He looked big and felt pretty secure in the branches surveying the yapping nuisances below. I had sighted the gun in after the mishap two days before so I took careful aim. The preferred site, the hind leg, was obscured by branches so I aimed for the foreleg. The dart struck him right on target! We waited a couple of minutes and then backed the hounds away so he would be encouraged to leave the tree. The tree wasn't feeling like such a secure place anymore so he literally leaped at the chance and took off down the hill. Chuck followed with Pup on the leash. I came along a bit later with the rest of the leashed hounds (quite a hand full!). After about 300 yards when he still hadn't succumbed to the drug we decided he wasn't going to so we turned the hounds loose again. We were in for another chase. The result wasn't going to be as smooth as the first and Gray had yet to find us.

MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 7 (second half)

The idea for a zoo in Salt Lake City started out in 1911 as a display in Liberty Park of a cageful of monkeys to which a deer was added a bit later. A year later the Salt Lake Parks Department decided a zoo would be a good idea and with an investment of $153 purchased five pairs of exotic birds, a pair of foxes, a pair of squirrels and a pair of white-faced ring-tailed monkeys. The collection was expanded and a new building built, the "Happy Family Building" that housed lots of birds but also about 100 rabbits. Admission was free. 

By 1916 the zoo entered the big time with a purchase from a travelling circus of Princess Alice (named after Teddy Roosevelt's daughter), a 31- or 32-year-old Asian elephant. The $3250 cost was mostly raised from small donations by schoolchildren. By now there were more than 275 animals, mostly from North America, 26 of which were donated. Princess Alice may have been pregnant when she arrived because gestation in elephants is almost two years and she gave birth in 1918 to a son later named Prince Utah. He was almost a year old when Princess Alice rolled over on top of him and killed him. The newspapers reported that she mourned his loss with tears and trumpeting. Periodically in the next twelve years she would make a break for it and amble through back yards in the neighborhood breaking fences and clotheslines. Mr. and Mrs. James Hogle in response to the outpouring of community concern donated the parcel of land where Hogle Zoo is presently located in 1931 largely so Princess Alice would have a more secure cage. In August of that year Hogle Zoo reportedly opened its doors to a crowd of 14,000 (I think it more likely that 14,000 was the number of people that visited it in a year). For a while Alice was secure.

People are nothing if not fickle and by 1934 the water supply was cut off to the zoo due to nonpayment of their $195 bill. The zoo director threatened to turn all of the animals loose if the water wasn't turned back on, which it was. By 1941 the zoo was in terrible shape. One article in the Salt Lake newspaper published June 19, 1941 was headlined "Bad Odor, Old Cages, Garbage - That's Salt Lake City's Zoo". Mr. and Mrs. Hogle requested the return of their land. It must have improved because the next year the newspaper reported that the zoo's oldest lion had died "due to the shock of living in new, clean, comfortable quarters."

Some visitors to the park looked upon the animals as fair game. A boy killed one of the zoo's deer with an arrow in 1943 and a polar bear received a non-fatal gunshot to the head in 1946. Thereafter the director said guns on the grounds would be confiscated and people harassing the animals would be punished.

Left entrance sculpture

Right entrance sculpture

In 1947 the two beautiful sculptures of mountain lions by Dr. Avard Fairbanks that adorned the entrance when we visited the zoo (now no longer there) were erected. That was also the year Princess Alice forced open the doors of her building and charged through the neighborhood, uprooting a tree and destroying a drinking fountain. After her romp (rather impressive for a 62-year-old!) she calmly returned to her quarters. Six years later she became ill and was put to sleep.

A new mountain lion exhibit was constructed in 1960 and by the time we visited in 1975 they had nine mountain lions, an overpopulation in my opinion. Now they don't have any. An underpopulation I would say!

In 1969 the 37-year-old zoo director was fatally bitten by an African puff adder. Antivenom serum was flown in from San Diego and given as soon as possible but it didn't save him. He was replaced by the director we met at the time we visited Hogle. 

When we visited Hogle Zoo in 1975 we had several zookeepers helping us so everything moved rather quickly. It was sort of like an assembly line. We were stationed in an area behind the exhibit and the comatose lions were brought to us one by one. Or sometimes two at a time. The first three females then a couple males passed through our hands complete with recorded measurements and blood samples. As soon as all the lions were out of the big cage they started putting the recovering ones back in. It all went smoothly until the last male was put back in before he was fully recovered. He must have fallen or one of the other males must have decided to take advantage of the state he was in and knocked him off the rocks, killing him. I was numb with shock when I heard about it. That wasn't supposed to happen! I was reminded that haste indeed makes waste because this tragedy could have been prevented. It was with heavy hearts as we packed up and left the zoo.

Weighing an Albuquerque lion

We drove directly to Albuquerque and worked with their mountain lions two days later. Although there were only six lions there were fewer zoo keepers as well and the scene was much calmer. We had more time to contemplate each animal!

With a sigh of relief we returned to Fort Collins so I could analyze all of the data we'd gathered. We'd made it through the first year!