MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 5 (second half)

Ray took the snowmobile out for a practice run. It was a government one and, true to form, it broke down. After much exertion he jury-rigged it enough to make it back to the truck then hauled it into Canon City, the only nearby town with a garage that could fix such beasts. On the way the brakes on his truck jammed and burned through costing him $170 to repair. Exhausted, he returned to camp late that evening.

Ray woke up at 12:30 am short of breath and with chest pains. Ken pounded on my door until I was awake and fairly lucid then left me with Ray while he went to Ed's to phone the doctor. I tried to keep Ray calm and talked all manner of nonsense to try to keep his mind occupied but it's about as possible to not be worried about a heart attack as it is to not be worried when you're swimming in the ocean and see a triangular fin coming your way! All of us made it through the night and at first light headed down the canyon to the nearest hospital.

After extensive testing the doctors decided it had not been a typical heart attack but Ray would have to take it easy for a while. Wrestling snow mobiles and lions was not in the cards for him any time soon.

Although we were happy that Ray was not in as bad shape as we feared, we were bummed that we would have to find another houndsman pretty late in the season. Most of them were already booked up with hunters. We headed back to Fort Collins and Ken started calling men that Ray had suggested. We thought our luck had changed when we found one of his friends was available. We arranged to meet Joe at camp the following Sunday.

A nicer guy than Joe didn't exist. He never had a bad word to say about anyone even when we met with further hardships.

The first day out we broke through a four-inch crust of iced snow and high-centered in the foot or so of soft snow underneath. It took us about three hours with two shovels going continuously to heave the wretched stuff away enough to back out. My muscles complained for days afterwards.

While Ray had been waiting for his brakes to be fixed on his truck he had struck up a conversation with a young fellow who offered to show us some good lion country and supply us with horses.  He gave Ray his phone number which Ray had left with us. We called him up and made arrangements to meet. With that one phone call we landed ourselves in the middle of an old-fashioned, no-holds-barred family feud. We didn't realize it for a while but wondered why Lee's aunt wasn't more cordial. Most of the folks in the area were friendly and nice. We later contacted Lee's cousin about looking for lion sign on his land which was next to Lee's. He screwed up his face into a scowl and snarled. "You can but if you bring one of those #*&#!*&* horses I'll shoot it!"

We never found out what the feud was about but the lines were certainly drawn.

Four days later Specks, Joe's best dry-ground dog (the dog with the best sense of smell) got too close to a horse's heels and was kicked for her efforts. Her femur was neatly snapped in two. The vet set it but Specks like Ray was out for the season.

Birds were plentiful. We saw a pair of golden eagles almost daily and spotted a great horned owl, several spruce grouse and quite a few wild turkeys. Lion tracks were not as plentiful. We hunted for six days. The hounds got some lion scent from a couple of old tracks but not enough to follow very far. We heard via the grapevine that some people didn't think we were working very hard. If getting up at 5 am and riding until late afternoon but finding only a few unproductive tracks isn't working, I'd hate to really work! One of the accusers was an arm-chair expert to whom his coffee break was the most important part of his day. Or maybe lunch was - he was developing quite a paunch! I think he was jealous that I, a mere woman, was getting to scout for lions.

After an abortive two weeks I returned to the welcoming arms of my husband for five days then prepared to brave the mountains once more.

Six days after we returned we had a lion, albeit not in an orthodox way. We had hunted all day without success and had just settled down to the crock pot dinner I had left cooking. Our neighbor John was late in arriving and came running over shouting that we had a phone call. It was the local game warden and he said a lion was caught in a leg-hold trap set for bobcat west of Canon City and asked us to come immobilize it. We skipped supper, grabbed our gear and the three of us headed down the canyon. We met the game warden Dwayne in town and he directed us to a little box canyon just off the Arkansas River. The road ran across a bridge quite a ways above the floor of the ravine. Dwayne had a spot light that he aimed down the draw. We could barely detect the glow of the lion's eyes in some bushes but we could hear it thrash around. I asked Dwayne how big it was. 

"Oh it's a whopper - 140 pounds at least!" he answered. I loaded the dart with enough drug for a big animal.

We asked Dwayne to accompany us down the faint trail to the canyon floor but he demurred.

"I'll stay up here and shine the light on him so you can find him." he volunteered.

Joe, John and I scrambled down the little trail and cautiously crept forward, losing sight of the cat until we almost stumbled over it. It was scared and hurting.

The first shot immobilized a nearby rock, but the second shot was a good one in the shoulder. The lion was down in five minutes. We gently removed the trap and discovered it was a female, not a whopping big male. We doctored her toes with an antiseptic salve. When we weighed her we discovered she was only 80 pounds! She had gotten almost twice the dose that she should have!

I named her Francois since names are easier to remember than numbers, but officially she had #1 tattooed in her ear. I was afraid my first lion would be a mortality and there were plenty of folks around for a wake. Quite a crowd had gathered on the bridge, including a newspaper reporter and photographer.

Dwayne left his post by the light and helpfully brought the newspaper reporter and photographer down, but not before he had posed for a few pictures ("local hero radioing for help", "local hero holding the spotlight". etc.)

We had made most of the easy measurements we needed but I had left the blood draw for the last. I had only drawn blood from one zoo lion and was not feeling very confident. I trimmed the hair away from inside her knee, tied a rubber tube around her leg and miraculously a vein popped up! I surprised myself further by my lack of difficulty in drawing the blood even with five people peering over my shoulder. We put a red nylon rope collar with a plastic numbered tag around her neck, tattooed her ear, gave her a shot of penicillin and stood back, unsure of what would happen next. Would she die? 

I was loathe to leave her. The night was chilly so I covered her with my coat then we sat back and I prayed. Most of the crowd dispersed. After an hour and a half she lurched forward, wearing my coat rakishly over her shoulder, and headed for the river. Dwayne and John headed in the opposite direction. Joe and I dashed after her and aimed her back uphill then walked with her until she collapsed. After two and a half hours she could negotiate pretty well so we left her.

Francois wasn't the only one staggering. It was after midnight and our last meal had been more than 12 hours earlier. It had been a meager lunch at that. We stopped at an all-night restaurant on the way home. After an hour of making blood slides and centrifuging samples I stumbled into bed. 

Joe and I returned to the box canyon the next day. I was half afraid we would find her lifeless corpse. Sure enough, right next to the boulder where we'd left her lay Francois. Joe headed down the path to retrieve the body. But the corpse wasn't lifeless! As soon as she heard the rattle of the stones dislodged by Joe's descent she was up and behind the boulder. Joe, the intrepid, gentle man, just kept walking toward her talking softly. When she realized she wasn't hidden Francois with the grace of a bird in flight leapt up to a crack in the canyon wall that couldn't have been more than two inches wide, faltered once, then disappeared over the rim. I have never seen anything so breath-takingly beautiful! She was liquid motion like a wave flowing over the canyon wall. I couldn't even tell which foot had been caught in the trap. I was sad when she was killed by a hunter three years later.

MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 5 (first half)

Print from hind paw of male lion

A-stalking We Will Go!

The project for my master's thesis involved capturing, marking and measuring wild mountain lions. The procedure sounds quite simple on paper: find a fresh lion track, turn three or four hounds loose on it, follow the hounds' baying (Chuck, the third houndsman I worked with, stressed quite strongly that I never speak of a hound barking!), locate the treed cat, immobilize it with a dart gun, mark it, take blood samples and measurements, and skedaddle. In practice it was never that straightforward. 

After the laborious groundwork (find out from game wardens, ranchers, etc. where the highest density of mountain lions are in the state and pick a reasonable-sized project area within that range, choose parameters to measure that might change with age (looking towards my Ph.D. project), gather equipment, select an experienced person with hounds trained to hunt mountain lions, carry out public relations with locals in the project area, find or set up a base from which to operate, and so on), we arrived in the sleepy little mountain town of Victor that was once the scene of boom-or-bust mining and would later become the scene of destination gambling. A salty character named Ray was chosen to be the houndsman.

Ray always had a good yarn to tell, often from his army days during the war when he was a cook. One of my favorite stories was about a ne'er-do-well who often landed in Ray's kitchen for KP duty. One day practically the whole company came down with the trots making a visit from the health inspectors necessary. Ray was indignant and exonerated because nothing could be found. By the time the inspectors had written up their report everyone had recovered, so the cause was marked "unknown". The unfortunate ne'er-do-well who had hovered anxiously in the background during the inspection approached Ray timidly.

"Promise ya won't bust me if I tell yer something?" he asked.

Ray eyed him suspiciously but agreed not to.

"I was a-stirrin' the stew when I 'membered I hadn't washed mah hands so I did it real quick, a-tryin' to keep stirrin' but the soap fell in an' I couldn't get 'er out so's I just stirred 'er up real good."

We had a nice field camp established in what was sort of the front yard of an old miner's cabin. We had two small trailers set up, one for me and one for Ray (and my advisor when he visited). We had all the comforts of home, sort of. We had gas heat, soft beds and electricity but no running water. For electricity we had extension cords running to the porch light on the cabin. For water we had five gallon cans that we could fill from the cabin.

Summer view from outhouse door

View through outhouse gaps

For toileting facilities we had an outhouse nearby with a view. It was perched about 20 yards from the trailers on a little hill. The schoolhouse was situated on a neighboring hill and the town's main street stretched out in front from the bottom of our hill. Since it was winter the boards didn't fit snugly so it was well ventilated plus we had a view of the schoolyard and the main street. For bathing facilities we had to have the cooperation of the cabin's resident, a young mining engineer named John. If Ray or I wanted to schedule a shower we would make arrangements with John to stoke up his wood-burning stove in the morning so the big tank of water attached to it would be warm by evening. After supper (John often joined us) Ray or I would trot over to his cabin, soap and towel in hand. We were fortunate that John was a good-humored chap. He had twinkling eyes and an impressive chin bush.

One evening when John wasn't home I went into his cabin to use his shower. I startled a huge tabby cat who careened around the room, knocking things every which way until he escaped out the front door. Later I asked John about his skittish cat.

"What cat?" was his puzzled reply.

We first arrived in the icy month of December. The wind whipped the snow from the ridges as soon as it fell and piled it deep in the valleys. Bears have the right idea in that country - they hibernate from late fall until early spring. That was part of the reason we were venturing forth at that inhospitable time of the year. Most lion hounds would rather follow a bear than a lion. I guess bears are a lot smellier than lions. The best time of year to catch lions is when bears are out of the way. In spite of our timing we ended up treeing a few bears and believe me, bears are not sober citizens when they are treed! The have tempers that would try a saint! Another reason lions are usually hunted in the winter is tracks. It's easier to spot a track in the snow than on dry ground.

The plan was to spend a week scouting the territory then begin looking for lions in earnest after Christmas. A lot of snow had fallen the first couple of weeks in December, more than twice the usual amount. It was difficult to move around on the back roads even with our four-wheeled drive so we resolved to bring snowmobiles back with us after Christmas.

Our trailers had been set up when the weather was still mild in the fall and were winterized and ready for us when we got there. I arrived with my graduate adviser Ken the day before Ray. Ken excelled in remembering people's names, diplomacy and giving his students space to learn for themselves. Ken and I were rank beginners in the lion-tracking business so Ray took us out to show us the ropes. We started by walking down the road, scanning the sides for lion sign.

"I found one! This looks like a lion track," Ken shouted gleefully from his side of the road.

"We-ahl," said Ray with a twinkle in his eye as he straightened up after examining the track, "I b'lieve that was a mighty small lion. It looks to me like a mouse hop."

We had arranged for a helicopter to fly Ray over the study area after we got back from the Christmas break. He talked the rancher who owned the land where our trailers were parked, Ed, into coming along to point out various features of the terrain. I would have given my eye teeth to go along but there was no room.

Ray slyly volunteered to make breakfast the morning before his grand adventure. We were served scrambled eggs with what looked like little chunks of cheese. It tasted just fine. After breakfast Ray chuckled and explained he had wanted to use up the eggs left over from before Christmas. I thought he was kidding. He wasn't. The eggs had frozen and the thawed hardened yolks were what we had thought were cheese chunks. He was tickled to have put one over on us and been economical at the same time. We suffered no ill effects but I vowed to be less trusting of what he served us after this. Unfortunately I wasn't to get much of a chance.

The helicopter arrived at the helipad in good time and we took Ray and a very wan Ed out to meet it. Ray claimed to be a bomber pilot after his time as an army cook and was looking forward to the day with relish. Ed didn't really trust anything that left the ground except chickens. He had only consented to the trip because his buddies had been razzing him.

While Ray and Ed were flying Ken and I scouted around a bit then Ken suggested I practice using the tree climbers. A tree climber is a wicked-looking, sharpened steel bar with straps to hold it onto the leg and a short bar for stability under the foot. Equipped with one climber on each leg, a heavy belt around the waist with an attachment that goes around the tree, a person is ready to climb a tree, Ken says. I strapped the works on, walked bow-legged to the tree to keep from planting the sharpened points in the ground, joined the tree trunk to myself with the extra strap, and slowly ascended. It was kind of fun and gave me a feeling of accomplishment! The only problem was the weight. I was going to be packing around a fair amount of equipment and the climbers were heavy!

We met the returning helicopter and were told the flight was uneventful. Ed had a little extra swagger in his step when he stepped down. He had no desire to repeat the performance but I'm sure he let his buddies know that he had actually done it while they had only talked about it.

The troubles that were to plague us the rest of the season started the next day.

PET WORDS

Summer is almost here and lots of baby animals are being born. Would you like to adopt a pet? The word "adopt" comes from two Latin words meaning "to choose" and "pet" comes from the French word petit which means small and is used as a term of endearment. But which pet? Perhaps a puppy. The dog days of summer are in August when the Dog Star, Sirius, is in ascendancy. Some unusual names for dogs from history and fiction include Bulova the Watchdog, Bridgette Bar-dog, and Virginia Woof. Another Virginia, Virginia Graham, once said "Say something idiotic and nobody but a dog politely wags his tail."

A cat or kitten is another choice for adoption. Saki in Tobermory stated, "Cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvelously with our civilization while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts." Some cats have retained more feral instincts than others. Many people complain about the number of birds cats kill each year but few complain about the rats and mice similarly exterminated. Unless the mouse or rat is a pet.

"Rats!" is an exclamation of disgust due to the animal's reputation and we say someone looks ratty if they are unkempt. The white rats I've known have been very fastidious although with a strong natural odor. This odor tells a cat when a rat is near and thus to smell a rat means to suspect foul play.

Hunt and Peck

Speaking of fowls, my mother kept two chickens as pets to keep the bugs and caterpillars down in her garden. They were so spoiled they waited at the back door for her to come out to weed or pick vegetables before they would venture into the garden. One might say they were chicken, a term that has been applied to people as early as 1633 to denote a coward. A chick on the other hand is an attractive young woman and a woman no longer young might be referred to as no spring chicken, both phrases dating from the early 1800's. Aesop's Fables gave us the cautionary "Don't count your chickens before they hatch!"

Several types of pets hatch from eggs. Parakeets and canaries are very popular, particularly with people who live in apartments or are allergic to fur. In a graceful haiku poem Masaoka Shiki stated: "When my canary flew away
                                                  That was the end of spring in my house."

The canary was introduced into Europe in the late 16th century from (where else?) the Canary Islands. It is much loved for its sweet song. In the late 19th century a canary was slang for a female singer and later came to denote an informer. Another term for an informer is "stool pigeon" which probably comes in a roundabout way from the French "estale pigeon", a pigeon used to lure a hawk. It first just meant a decoy but later came to be applied to a man who hung around on a stool in a bar picking up gossip as an informer. "Pigeon" in the early 20th century meant a young woman (remember in the Walt Disney movie Tramp called Lady "Pigeon"?). Now it means a dupe.

Snakes also hatch from eggs and some people are quite attached to them. Most slang terms that come from snake references are negative. "Snake oil" refers to the supposed ability of a snake to deceive and became popular around 1925 in the U.S. It refers to a patent medicine of dubious efficacy. A snake in the grass is a deceitful person. Virgil mentioned danger in the form of a snake in the grass in Eclogues ("Latet anguis in herba.") A parallel phrase in the 16th century was a pad in the straw. "Pad" is an old English word for "toad" (the term padlock came into being because it was a lock shaped like a toad) and a toad is poisonous if you try to eat it. A colorful Southern idiom to describe a person of low morals is "lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut!". "Snake eyes" on the other hand means throwing two one pips when rolling dice which usually isn't a bad thing.

Pets help put all of our thoughts and ideas in perspective. Stephen Hawking conveys his view about humanity in the following story:
     A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from           keeping goldfish in curved bowls...saying it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl         with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view       of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of             reality?

Pets help keep us sane even if our view of the world is possibly skewed!

MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 4 (second half)

The fireplace later indirectly caused another problem. I loved the fact that the apartment had a fireplace. A log fire can make everything seem so cozy! My problem was wood: pre-cut logs were expensive and I had no way to cut my own. One afternoon as I was driving home from grocery shopping I saw a nice pile of boards in a vacant lot topped by a lopsided "free" sign. Boards are not as inviting as logs but they burn just as well so I happily loaded up the trunk and headed for home, congratulating myself on my find. I piled the wood in the back of my rather spacious closet, saving just enough out for a cheery fire that evening.

About a week later I caught myself scratching some terribly itchy little red bumps around my ankles. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was quite accustomed to mosquito bites and didn't stop to think it might be too chilly for mosquitoes.

The bumps didn't go away - they multiplied! An occasional one was appearing elsewhere on my body. To my horror I suddenly realized what the problem was. Bedbugs! In my opinion they are even worse than cockroaches because they are lurk around nearby and crawl on you while you sleep! Cockroaches at least have the decency to stay hidden.

It didn't take long for me to figure out they must have arrived as free boarders on the free boards! I had a whopping big bonfire that night and fiendishly hoped many of them sizzled. I knew they had probably spread elsewhere in the apartment so the next day I called my landlord and tried to sound indignant when I told him the apartment had bedbugs.

"Bedbugs? I think you mean cockroaches. We sometimes have problems with cockroaches."

"I'm pretty sure they're bedbugs."

I held my breath expecting him to ask where they came from, knowing I would have to tell him, but he didn't. The idea that there might be bedbugs in his converted Victorian house was just too foreign to him. In a couple of days a fumigator arrived and solved the bedbug and non-existent cockroach problem.

Several years later bedbugs again became a problem. Gray, Julie and I were airstrip hopping around Baja California in a plane that belonged to her flying club. This was before the highway extended all the way south on the peninsula. Julie had a very detailed pilot's guidebook to Baja ("... thirty feet down the airstrip is a prairie dog hole on the left side ..."). The book informed us that if we buzzed the little village of Bahia Tortuga the local taxi would come out to the airstrip. We tried it and it worked! We had camped on the beaches in many places but there was no beach for miles around this village. We asked the taxi driver to take us to the town's only motel.

"Sorry," he informed us. "Is full with soccer team."

A team from Mexico proper had come over to play the local team, taking all the available rooms in the motel. It was too late to fly on to someplace else since none of the airstrips were paved or had lights and night was fast approaching. We, or rather Gray (the only Spanish I knew was "Buenos dias!"; Julie knew a little more as a New Mexican doctor and could ask "Tiene doloro aqui?" ("Does it hurt here?"), but neither of us spoke as much as Gray) asked the driver if there were any other accommodations in town.

"Si!" he readily answered. "A lady in town takes in visitors."

We bumped over the road that was more potholes than cobbles. We were met at the house by a tiny little dumpling of a woman with fiery orange hair and no teeth. Gray in halting Spanish explained our situation to her.

"Si, si I have room" she said loudly in Spanish thinking perhaps that if she spoke loudly enough maybe even Julie and I would understand her.

Her house consisted of five small cinder block buildings around three sides of a dusty courtyard. She directed us to one of the middle buildings when we asked her where we would stay. If it was too terrible we figured we could camp out next to the plane and leave at dawn. The room turned out to be a drab tin-roofed structure with one window, one naked light bulb hanging down, and quite a number of beds. The floor looked like it was probably dirt. She assured us that the sheets would be fresh so we agreed upon a price after a bit of haggling.

Still smiling broadly the woman summoned her granddaughter, a cute, plump little girl of about ten. She was instructed to take us to one of the town's two cafes for supper while the room was prepared. We didn't seem to have a choice in the matter. The restaurant was owned by the grandmother's sister.

After a tasty meal of locally-caught fish we wandered back. The little girl met us on the road. She had changed her clothes in honor of the occasion and was now wearing a fresh, brightly-colored dress. Smiling and chattering in Spanish too fast for Gray to follow she took us to our room. To our surprise the floor was not dirt but concrete! We noticed a pitcher of water and basin on the dresser but saw no sign of sanitary facilities. Using his best textbook Spanish Gray inquired about them. His question was met with a puzzled stare. The little girl fetched her grandmother and Gray repeated the question. It was met with a broad, uncomprehending smile. Finally Gray tried some of the childish slang he had picked up on the coast of Spain: "Where's the potty?"

The little girl cast her eyes down and giggled behind her quickly-raised hand. Granny guffawed outright. At least they understood! The little girl gathered up a broom and rooted around in one of the buildings. She returned triumphantly with a new roll of toilet paper and beckoned us to follow.

We were led down a rocky little path past the church to a spot overlooking the sea. There perched on top of a 15-foot bank stood an outhouse. She held up her hand for us to stop about ten feet away and went in to the tiny structure. Newspapers, pages from magazines and the inevitable dirt came flying out. She handed Gray the toilet paper and proudly held the door open for us to see. At least there were enough cracks in the walls to keep a brisk sea breeze blowing through but the place was aromatic to say the least. We graciously (I hope) but hurriedly thanked her and she made sure we understood we had to bring the precious roll of toilet paper back with us.  After she left we one by one made use of the facilities. There weren't going to be any midnight visits if we could help it!

Our room looked very clean and the sheets on our beds were brand new but we were afraid the conditions were ideal for bedbugs. During my ordeal with bedbugs in Berkeley I had read extensively about the little beasts. One article had suggested that they wouldn't come out in the daylight so we decided to leave the lone light on all night just in case. We slept a bit fitfully until about 
11 pm when the room plunged into darkness! We waited a bit to see if it was a mistake. It wasn't. We later found out the town's generators were always shut off at 11 pm. We uneasily went back to sleep.

We had learned when travelling to keep a flashlight handy so when Julie yelled "I've got one! I've got one!" several hours later Gray and I fumbled for our flashlights. She held up her tightly-clenched fingers for inspection but all that was there was a little piece of lint. We returned to our uneasy sleep.

The next morning we checked our ankles. Nothing! I had found out some of the bites didn't become itchy until they were scratched so I rubbed my arms and legs. Still nothing! We headed off to the cafe for breakfast, bleary-eyed but jubilant. 

I had hoped that would be my last experience with bedbugs but alas it hasn't been. But I did have a 15-year break.

After my first quarter at Berkeley I was faced with several major decisions. Did I want to aim for a Ph.D. in neurophysiology at Berkeley and end up working in a lab or should I follow my heart back to Colorado and wildlife biology. Neurophysiology certainly seemed more prestigious. But there was one additional bonus for my heart in Colorado: Gray. He was studying engineering there and had asked me to marry him. Wildlife and wedding bells won out so at the end of three quarters I packed my belongings and Harley and I headed back.

After arranging to be admitted into graduate school as an unfunded wildlife student in the fall Harley and I drove down to Albuquerque where Julie lived and was completing her internship in medicine. Dependable Julie again agreed to cat-sit for me while I flew back to Illinois where my 96-year-old grandmother lived with my aunt and uncle. She was not able to travel but was a very important part of my life so we had decided to take the wedding to her. There were lots of wedding plans to be made.

Julie agreed to keep Harley for the month before the wedding then planned to bring her to Colorado in a private plane, leave her with friends, pick up our father and stepmother and fly them to the wedding in Illinois. Carrying cages were not as ubiquitous as they are now so I constructed my own for Harley using cardboard and screening. It looked quite substantial with two layers of cardboard and the screen between them with a few cut-out holes.

Julie reported to me the rest of the story. Harley rode in the carrier quite calmly to the airport but her serenity evaporated when they entered the busy flight service office. In a minute flat she was out of the box and ricocheting around the room. It was a bit like trying to grab a porcupine but Julie managed to catch her and put the harness on. Then she walked over to the air freight shipping lines and bought a real carrying cage that was guaranteed to withstand the escape attempts of cats like Harley. Once in the air Harley became accustomed to the noise and seemed to settle down. She satisfied herself with stretching her paw through the bars every once in a while to give Julie a tap on the shoulder, reminding her of her presence. As if Julie could forget! For a long time after Julie was known at the flight service center as the woman with the cat.

Without much further ado Harley landed in Colorado a second time. None of us suspected that in a few short years she would become a cat with cougar experience!

MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 4 (first half)

Problems with Neutrality

Mut had been very special so I didn't want my next cat (for me there will always be a "next cat") to in any way replace his memory. I answered an ad in the paper and adopted an adventuresome little pastel calico kitten. Neither she nor I knew what adventures would fill her five years of life.

Harlequin seemed an appropriate name for my little patchwork kitten. I was still living with Amy and Daphne so I had to introduce her to the household carefully. Amy loved her right away but Daphne had to watch her carefully for a while before she was able to ignore her.

I had been accepted into graduate school at U.C. Berkeley for the fall semester. Harley was six months old and it was time for her to be spayed. I had decided to wait to do that until we had gotten to California, but then something happened that tipped the balance in an other, fateful direction.

Amy's boss, an M.D., said he wanted to show a group of pharmacology graduate students how to spay a cat and needed a volunteer. He said he had spayed a dozen dogs and at least that many cats. Time was short and the operation would be done a day before I was planning to drive to California. I checked with my vet to see if that would be dangerous. He said the incision was so small that travelling would present no problem to a healthy cat a day or two after spaying. It was sheer stupidity on my part, but I agreed to let her be spayed by an M.D. I let Amy take her to the Medical Center.

That evening a horror awaited me when I went to pick Harley up. A veterinarian when spaying a cat carefully shaves the animal's abdomen then scrubs it with an iodine soap to cleanse it and kill any lurking bacteria. A tiny 3/4 inch incision is made through which the uterus and ovaries are drawn. First the abdominal muscles and then the skin are carefully sewn up.

That was not what the doctor had done with Harley. Her abdomen had not been shaved and an extensive six inch incision had been made down the middle. After rummaging around and probably removing something the "doctor" had callously stapled her shut like a package leaving hair and dirt from non-sterile instruments inside her.

I ranted and raved at him, but he cold-heartedly shoved her into my hands and left. I went home weeping for my abused baby cat.

The next day Gray, Harley and I left for California. It was extremely hot so we kept a bucket of ice on the floor next to the still-groggy cat. We sponged her off when she was panting but were unable to do much more to help her. We made it to Reno by mid-afternoon the second day and decided to stop. Harley staggered out of the car and it was obvious she was not going to make it to California in that condition. With each step huge drops of pus oozed out of the stapled incision. We called the first vet we found in the phone book and rushed her to his office.

"I can't believe this! I can't believe anyone would do such a thing to a living animal much less someone's beloved pet!" he declared in disgust. "I'll have to open her up right away. She may not survive the anesthesia in her condition but I'll have to try!"

That dear, heroic vet who would never see Harley or me again but who cared about the well-being of his fellow creatures stayed into the night to try to save Harley.

The next morning we arrived at his office full of trepidation. I was afraid to hope. It was too possible that my stupid choice had killed my kitten. Not so, the vet cheerfully informed me!

"I removed a great deal of hair, washed out her abdominal cavity with antibiotic solution and shaved the edges so more hair won't get into the wound," he explained.

Unfortunately the infection within her little body was so rampant that most of the six inches had to be left open to drain. As a consequence I had to several times a day tuck her gut back up through the hole. But she was alive. She had survived in spite of the odds. I wanted to hug the vet and hug Harley, neither of which was practical, so I enthusiastically pumped the vet's hand before gently taking Harley out to the car. I vowed to never again put a pet's life into the care of anyone but a competent veterinarian!

Harley slowly healed after settling down in California but the final indignity from the whole sorry mess was yet to come. Almost three months later Harley came into heat. I told myself I was imagining things. Harley was just being exceptionally friendly out of loneliness. In part that was true - she was achingly lonely for a tom, any old tom. She rubbed her way around the room uttering mournful mrroes from deep in her throat.

I didn't know what to do. Cats are induced ovulators which means a queen won't ovulate until her vaginal tract has been stimulated. If a female isn't mated she will keep coming into heat with fair regularity. Harley had been cheated into having the desire but not all of the equipment.

After a wall-climbing month of indecision I called a local vet and explained the situation to him. I asked for his advice.

"Are you sure the ovaries were removed?" he asked dubiously.

"They were supposed to be but I don't trust a man who staples hair inside the incision" I responded.

The vet suggested I call the incompetent butcher and ask if he could have left any tiny bit of ovary. Even a tiny bit could have been able to produce enough hormones to bring Harley into what he called psychic heat.

It seems the fellow's abilities, first surgical and now linguistic, were fading fast. He declined to talk to me so I had to go through Amy. Poor kid, she was very defensive about the whole thing. She had inadvertently guided me into this whole mess.

"Of course he removed the ovaries Mary Jean!"

"Oh. So Harley's just imagining her desires. Or do you think I'm the one imagining her desires?" I sputtered.

"You got her into that. My boss didn't guarantee he'd do it like a vet."

I pieced together enough from our conversation to get the picture. Harley had been an anatomical model. Her insides had been exposed to the probing of the students and probably a bit of ovary had been carelessly poked off and not removed when the bulk of her ovaries had. I guess Harley was lucky it had been a part of an ovary instead of a piece of the intestine. That would have probably resulted in a rather gruesome death. I hung up in disgust.

The California vet was willing to operate but warned me the piece of ovary might be so tiny that it couldn't be found in the mass of tissue. He suggested birth control pills instead. Harley became the first cat to be put on birth control pills to control not her fertility (that had been taken care of when her uterus had been removed) but to eliminate her desire. Birth control pills neutered her where the bungling operation of an irresponsible M.D. could not. I gave her 1/4 of a human birth control pill each week. Occasionally I would forget and before long local toms would leave smelly calling cards at the door and sing mournfully throughout the night.

On one such occasion Harley slipped outside. I chased her all around the neighborhood but she eluded me. Later I saw her under a bush being mounted by a big, scruffy tom. I rushed outside just as he was about to consummate the act. At his anticipated moment of glory he was thwarted by a Denver M.D. and me. Harley dashed into the open door.

I decided it might be better to at least try to find the bit of ovary so surgery was scheduled. The vet had to make a larger incision than for a usual spay since he had to be able to look around, but he took all the usual precautions of shaving her abdomen and disinfecting everything. I was in the waiting room when he came out after the surgery.

"Did you find anything?" I asked anxiously.

"Well her uterus was gone, but I found two intact ovaries. Some spay!" I think it's worth mentioning that in humans the ovaries are sometimes not removed when the uterus is, the thought being the hormones from the ovaries help the woman age more naturally. This is not the situation in cats! I bet the M.D. had never performed a spay before because any animal owner would have noticed the result of intact ovaries!

Yet again Harley had to heal but this time she didn't come into heat again. She reverted to the curious little cat I knew. One evening when I got back from classes I found smudgy little cat tracks coming from the fireplace. Harley was peacefully sleeping on her sheepskin. I decided she must have just walked into the empty fireplace to check it out. Perhaps she had heard birds calling down the chimney and walked over to investigate. I thought no more about it.

A few days later Harley was nowhere to be found when I came home. I dashed out to the kitchen to see if I could have left a window open but it was tightly shut. Puzzled, I went back to the living room. A faint rustle, a sprinkling of soot, and bam! A little black cat descended precipitously from the chimney! Somehow Harley had found purchase in the chimney and gone exploring. It's possible she had even paid my upstairs neighbors a visit and left ghostly little cat tracks behind.

I snatched her up before she could make a mess of the whole living room and marched with her at arms' length directly into the bathroom. Several towels later she was an indignant dishwater gray. I went right out and bought a fireplace screen. Harley in blackface was not funny!

DONKEY DERIVTIONS

I, said the donkey, all shaggy and brown,

I carried His mother uphill and down,

I carried her safely to Bethlehem town,

I said the donkey all shaggy and brown.

- from The Friendly Beasts, a traditional Christmas carol

The donkey is revered by Christians for its uncomplaining labor on behalf of the mother of Jesus. It was considered unclean by the Egyptians, Jews and Muslims. The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul encounters a fearsome red ass after death. The French still have an expression, "merchant comme un ane rouge" which translates "vicious as a red donkey". It is possible that the Scarlet Beast of the Apocalypse sprang from the same Egyptian root.

The word donkey was not commonly used until the late 18th century. A plow horse was referred to as dobbin, a diminutive of Robert via Robin and an ass was referred to as dicky thence donkey, probably from Duncan or perhaps Richard. The word ass is far older and comes originally from the Latin asinus. Asinine has the same root and means stupid, which asses aren't, but they are stubborn! The name burro comes from the Spanish word borrico which in turn comes from the Latin word for a small or inferior horse, burricus.

The donkey was domesticated in the Middle East from the wild asses of North Africa about 7500 BC. Sheep and goats had already been domesticated but cattle, horses and pigs had not.

Mules were discovered early on to have more stamina (we now call it hybrid vigor) than either horses or donkeys because mules are mentioned in the Bible and the Iliad. Mules are the result of crossing a mare (64 chromosomes) and a jack (male ass with 62 chromosomes). If a stallion is crossed with a jenny (female ass) the result is called a hinny. Both mules and hinnies can be either sex. A hinny for some reason lacks the mule's stamina. Hinnies neigh and mules bray so the dad seems to contribute the offspring's vocal cords. Occasionally (fewer than 100 times since the middle of the sixteenth century) a female mule can be fertile and produce offspring. It's surprising that there are any since mules and hinnies have one more chromosome than donkeys and one fewer chromosome than horses so the chromosomes can't divide evenly. All of those 60 or so fertile mules or hinnies have been female. Nary a male mule or hinny can claim paternity to anything!

An old wives' tale explains that in order to get a donkey to mate with a mare the farmer should sprinkle urine from a female donkey around the mare, darken the stable, and play violin music (accordion music is acceptable if a violinist is unavailable). Actually I think the mare just needs to be in heat!

A character in Brazilian folklore is the Headless Mule. According to most traditions it is either a woman who has been cursed by God or her ghost. Her sin appears to have been fornication with a priest and thereby condemned to turn into a fire-spewing mule that has to gallop through the country from sundown on Thursday until sunrise on Friday. I wonder how she spews fire without a head or mouth?

The most familiar donkey slang is "donkey's years" which means a long time. This term probably comes from slurring "donkey's ears". Donkey's have very long ears which would translate into a long time.

Geometry students have long been faced with proving to their teachers' satisfaction Euclid's fifth proposition of his first book: if a triangle has two side of equal length the angles opposite them must also be equal. Because the proof is tedious students sometimes refer to the structure as an asses bridge (or pons asinorum if they are also taking Latin, which nowadays not very many are). German students refer to it as Esels-brucke and French students call it pons aux anes.

The donkey became associated with the Democratic party when Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828. His opponents referred to him as a jackass. Rather than be insulted he gleefully adopted the strong-willed animal as his logo and put it on his campaign posters!

Another expression that is not used often any more is "talk the hind legs off a donkey". I wouldn't want to do that so I'll stop here!

MOUNTAIN LION LADY : Chapter 3 (second half)

Mut (1)

Elaine and I worked out a very elaborate plan for Mut after my graduation. I was going to work in Germany for a year, so Elaine agreed to take care of him for one semester until Gray (who was miraculously still my boyfriend after the cockroach incident) was back on campus. He had agreed to take care of Mut until my return. It was a solid plan but turned out to be a mirage that disappeared when put to the test. Elaine and her new housemate did not see eye-to-eye on much so Elaine moved to a new apartment. Unfortunately pets were not allowed. Mut was bundled off to Aunt Mary X who lived 40 miles away.

Aunt Mary X while not a complete felophobe didn't really care for cats. Fortunately her cleaning woman did and agreed to take Mut. She loved cats to excess and was soon smitten with him. Aunt Mary X's letters were filled with Edith's descriptions of the wonders of Mut. The one cloud on the horizon was Mut's happy-go-lucky life out-of-doors was curtailed. Edith lived near a factory that regularly put out rat poison so she would only let Mut go outside on a leash. In installments I learned about Mut's adventures with the neighborhood feral tom who somehow avoided poisoned rats. Upon the first meeting with the tom Mut swelled to magnificent portions with his long hair puffing out from his body and his tail twice its usual size. According to Edith, his vocalizations were something to behold. The lion in him came roaring out. It turned out to be a paper lion because after the first episode he would carefully check for the tom's presence before venturing outside and refuse to budge if his nemesis was anywhere near. Periodically they would meet in spite of Mut's best efforts and they would again have words.

All would have been well had Mut's ailment not developed. One morning he went to use the litter box but nothing came out. He shuffled around the house hunched over and uncomfortable until Edith became concerned. She called Aunt Mary X and Aunt Mary X took Mut to the vet. The vet diagnosed bladder stones and advised them that Mut should be allowed free movement outside so he could relieve himself whenever he felt the urge. We still don't know exactly what causes formation of bladder stones but the diet and not free-will urination is often suspected. No one knew that at the time. Aunt Mary X and Edith, to say nothing of Mut, were in a quandary: death by poison or death by bladder stones? What to do? Aunt Mary X was rarely at a loss for solutions for long, so she was soon on the phone talking to my sister Julie.

Julie was in medical school in Denver and living in a house with three other women, a man (no hanky-panky, just another impoverished medical student) and two cats. Charo was an attractive, dark female and her sister Fuma was a rather odd light gray. Her color wasn't odd - it was her personality. She would stare at the wall for hours then suddenly leap into the air and disappear. They often called her Schitzy-Fu.

Julie and Aunt Mary X decided Mut would be better off in Colorado. Arrangements were made for Julie to meet his plane and he was in Colorado before Daddy had a chance to splutter about the price.

Mut flourished in Denver. The other two feline residents were pampered aristocrats and Mut got to share their expensive cat food. His bladder problem seemed to clear up. The only other cat in the neighborhood was a rather dominant tom next door but they had soon worked out an arrangement with no bloodshed. Mut mostly learned to stay out of his way (he really was of debatable courage as his name (see chapter 2) suggests!).

Mut appeared to have accepted with equanimity my desertion to Germany, his removal to Edith's, and even his flight to Denver and installation in a crowded house. But every cat has his limits! Mut's were reached when Julie went to western Colorado for a two-month externship. He quietly had a breakdown. Every day he retreated to Julie's bedroom and started grooming the fur right off his beautiful, fluffy tail! When Julie finally returned he looked like a ball of thistledown with a skinny rat tail attached! His tail was completely hairless. Just by being there Julie restored his confidence and within a few months his tail was restored to its former glory.

The man of the house moved out and one more woman, Amy, moved in. Amy was accompanied by Daphne, a lovely black second-generation Siamese. Mut was the only even faintly masculine member of the household until the pedigreed puppy arrived. Gail, a secretary in a house filled with med students or scientists, must have felt in need of an ally. She decided the little Lhaso Apso fit the bill. It didn't seem to matter that he was expensive (all the other animals were rescues) and she had no money. The little puppy was as scatterbrained as his owner. Gail kept her messes confined to her room, but the puppy shared his throughout the whole house. The cats were indignant!

The household was adjusting itself to the puppy when I returned from Germany. I decided to work at the medical center for a year or so until I decided in what field of graduate study I was most interested. The only room available to me was the closet of Amy's room. Her room had originally been the recreation room and the closet was a large, well-lit one in the basement.

Six women, four cats and one puppy in what had been built as a two-bedroom house. The previous owner was an inveterate do-it-yourselfer. He had constructed a rather bewildering catacombs in the basement, subdividing it so four more-or-less bedrooms were available. Julie and Martha, a biochemist, occupied the only real bedrooms upstairs. 

Martha's mother was Honduran and Martha had a strongly Catholic bent flavored with Latin American flair. Now and then she needed a duenna, a role which Gray on one occasion was able to fulfill. Gray was in Denver for a short visit before joining a research ship bound for southern Chile and Argentina. Julie let him have her bedroom (what a sister!) and she and I took turns sleeping on the floor of my closet cum bedroom. One night the whole crowd went to a party for Amy's Spanish class. Martha wore an authentic, flamboyant Honduran costume. Julie was resplendent and entirely out of character in a glittering gold lame (sorry - the blog program won't let me type an accent) outfit of Amy's.

Amy was tall and beautiful and rather enamored of her teacher. Martha flirted with the teacher's South American friend. One thing led to another and the two men were invited to our house for coffee. We all retired except Martha, Amy and the two Don Juans. Finally Amy also went to bed leaving Martha and the two Latin lovers. Amy's teacher fell asleep on the sofa which stimulated the South American fellow to new heights. Martha noisily fought him off which seemed to further inflame his ardor. She struggled over to Gray's door and desperately appealed for help. Gray threw the two out. When I woke Martha for work the next morning she was still fully clothed. She was terrified the rebuffed Don Juan would return!

Julie graduated and the household split up. Martha, Charo, Fuma, Mut and I moved into a one-bedroom apartment. This time I got the living room instead of a closet. Mut's next adventure was about to begin.

I was wary of keeping Mut inside for more than a few days because I still believed that if he was penned up the bladder stones might form again. One evening I took him outside to look around. He sniffed at the bushes but made no move to run away. I stayed with him for about a half an hour, then called for him to come in. I usually gave him food when I called him and he was always ready for a bite to eat! 

The next evening I let him out for a short time but didn't stay with him. A mistake. When I called him he didn't come running. I called and called.

"He's probaly gone back to the house," Martha sensibly suggested. The house was only a few blocks away but across busy Colfax Avenue. I had visions of a squashed and lifeless Mut and took off running and calling towards the house. I was relieved not to find his body but worried because he had not turned up at the house. I walked and walked, calling and calling, but there was no answering "Mrrow?"

I visited the humane society shelter (they encouraged me to take another cat), put ads in the newspaper, had several radio stations announce that Mut was missing, all to no avail. I finally admitted to myself that Mut, like Fluffy before him, had disappeared. Good old lazy, lovable Mut. He'd caused my family and friends so much bother but I still loved and wept for him. Little did I know what he had in his absence lined up for my further edification!