And then, they “tree” it-they basically chase it up a tree, where the cat’s not very happy about being up there. Credit: Michael KodasĪnd so they have trained hounds, which go on to the scent of the cat. Kim Frey, right, describes how a cougar got into her family’s chicken house, as her daughter, Haddie, 12, holds a dog that is just one of many animals the family keeps at their home in the woods west of Port Angeles, on Washington’s Olympic Penninsula. And actually, it’s pretty interesting to see that they’re afraid of dogs, just like your house cat might be. And that’s a way to educate people to see how these large carnivores operate on the landscape. And what was actually pretty neat about how the Olympic Cougar Project operates, for people who have interactions with the big cats, they offer to come out on a capture with them. It’s really kind of touching because the family really loves animals.Īnd that’s why they actually had all these farm animals that they kept more as pets than as you know, money making operation their chickens, they didn’t even sell the eggs with their chickens. Their first reaction was to try to figure out what to do about it, and how to protect their animals. So they didn’t know what to do, actually, but their first reaction was not to kill the cat. But sadly, they didn’t really know who to call or what to do they were new to the area, they’d come from Texas, and they just watched helplessly. GROSS: They were horrified and very upset. O’NEILL: How did the family respond to that? And the same young cougar came by and took one of the goats and several more chickens, which is very sad. Unfortunately, after that, the family had a habit of walking their goats and letting them free range, and let their chickens out. And the geese stood up to defend the chickens and the cougar killed them right away. GROSS: It’s very sad, they had brought two geese with them from their home in Texas and the geese had sort of been alarm animals for their chickens, which they had back there as well. O’NEILL: And what did the family end up losing? One of the cats peeked their head in the door, tried to see if they could get inside, then realized they could, wiggled in, and then chaos ensued. This is what one of the experts thinks happened. And a cougar walked by, triggered the motion operated light, which opened the solar power door. But the problem is that the enclosure was attached to a shed that had a solar operated door. It had a roof, it had a totally enclosed fence. They had goats, they had chickens, they had geese. So the family actually had a really amazing enclosure for their animals. GROSS: That was actually an unbelievably, remarkably unlucky series of events. Tell us what happened when a cougar came in contact with the Frey family. O’NEILL: There’s one particular story I want to hear more about. And so a cat sees something that looks like prey, it’s going to take that animal. And the cats keep winding up dead because they happen upon somebody’s goat or somebody’s llama that’s being raised sort of out in the middle of the woods without being protected. But what happens is, because there’s a lot of development that’s been happening, and more and more people are moving to the Olympic Peninsula, the cats keep winding up dead. They’re wide ranging carnivores, they basically have a huge territory, and especially the young dispersers go out and they try to find homes. GROSS: So the original idea of this project was to understand the biology and the ecology of these animals. O’NEILL: You write that researchers with the Olympic Cougar Project put collars on cougars to study them. Liza Gross reported on this for our media partner Inside Climate News. And in some cases that’s leading to tragedy for pet and livestock owners and the cougars themselves. The big cats, which are also known as mountain lions and panthers, are plenty at home on the peninsula already. But many don’t realize they’re moving into cougar territory. From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Producer Aynsley O’Neill with Liza Gross of Inside Climate News.ĪYNSLEY O’NEILL: The Olympic Peninsula in Washington State is a lush temperate rainforest that’s attracting newcomers from the rest of the Pacific Northwest.
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