[or-roots] Cougars...

[CKlooster at aol.com]

Among the bits of wisdom given me by my mother was "Bears are more afraid  of 
you than you are of them.". My mother had never met an Alaskan bear.   
Bears...and I include both black bears and brown (grizzly) bears...are not  afraid 
of anything.  That being the case, nobody in this Yukon  River community goes 
out of the village proper without a gun.  Berry  picking is particularly risky 
since people and bears are both fond of the berry  patch; when berry picking, 
most people take a designated gunner to keep  watch.  Still, in close to 
thirty years here, I know of no people in this  area injured by bears or wolves.
 
People in the US seem increasingly to expect a world   without danger or 
risk...so much so that some people are willing to give up  privacy, basic civil 
rights and freedom for the illusion of safety and  security.  We expect our 
children to be born healthy and to grow to  adulthood; our grandparents had no 
such illusions.  We expect illness to be  curable with antibiotics or other 
pharmaceuticals; our grandparents sat anxious  vigil with herbs and patent 
medicines as the only help for sick relatives. We  expect our countryside to be free 
of dangerous wild animals and we expect to be  old when we die. I believe that 
when future generations (assuming there are  any) look back at this time, they 
will regard it as a time of great  naivety.  We're running out of antibiotics 
effective against resistant  pathogens; many of this generation have immune 
systems unchallenged by serious  virus or bacteria infection.  As recently 
demonstrated in Great Britain,  security cameras can only tell you who blew up the 
underground, small  consolation to those who were injured or to the families 
of those who  died. We may shortly participate in a pandemic...if not the bird 
flu,  then another variant.  Our climate is changing rapidly and with  
extreme weather results.  In short, this is not now, nor has it ever been a  safe 
world and harboring the assumption of safety is actually pretty  detrimental to 
our survival.
 
Cougars, bears, wolves, and humans are all "top of the food chain"  
predators.  Yet, since the turn of the last century there have been less  than two 
hundred reported attacks on humans by cougars and wolves.   Contrast that with the 
more than 30,000 deaths resulting from automobile  accidents each year.  I 
believe that many of the encounters and subsequent  attacks on humans by 
predators are a result of a lack of human vigilance; people  strolling through the 
countryside without paying particular attention to  potential danger. I don't 
regard wild animals as fuzzy would-be pets, but I  would not want to live in a 
world in which cougars and bears and wolves have no  place.  I think the key is 
vigilance and respect.
 
And that's my soap box.
 
Carla
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/or-roots/attachments/20051208/10f209eb/attachment.html>