Last week, a hiker reported he had been jumped by a big cat near Palo Alto. He said it had knocked him off the trail and then run off. He was shaken up, but otherwise unhurt. The authorities went into full damage control mode, calling in a tracker and his dogs to hunt the beast down. They were unable to find any sign of a mountain lion.
Today, there was a little twist to the story:
In all my years of hiking, I’ve never encounted a stealth attack dog. :rolleyes:
I bet this is the culprit.
That’s hilarious! 
A mountain lion that knocked him down, then simply ran off? Without a single body part in it’s mouth?
Man, you guys have some wimpy mountain lions up there… 
I kid, but seriously, a woman was almost killed here a few years ago. From NBC news in San Diego -
:eek:
The first time I tried to go hiking at Whitling Ranch, it was closed because of mountain lion sightings. That was a couple of weeks before the attack on the cyclists. Nowadays, almost every trailhead in California has a big sign warning people that they’re entering mountain lion habitat.
My theory about the Palo Alto “victim” – he slipped off the trail, got dinged up, embellished the story to a friend, reported it to back his story up, and got in a fib.
“Would you believe it was a Wolf?”
No.
“Then would you believe it was a rabid squirrel?”
No.
“I see. How about a really annoyed sparrow?”
No.
On a more serious note, I wish they did charge him with something. If they found a mountain lion, they were gonna kill it, right? That would have been terrible for them to kill a cougar for his lie.
Hmmmmm…sounds like this guy (in opening paragraph). :rolleyes:
It’s an injustice, I tell you! Wild animals are always getting falsely blamed for stuff like this because people know they can get away with it. Just look at all the blame put on my wild coyote brethren for missing pets and livestock. It’s never a coyote … it’s uh … that Chupacabra thing, yeah, that’s the ticket. Chupacabra. nods
There were mountain lion tracks found at a school a ways north of Palo Alto at the end of last year.
And there was a mountain lion in the middle of Palo Alto 4 years ago.
Or this one, from the Crufts Dog Show hack in The Magic Christian, one of the looniest and funniest movies ever…
From the article:
:smack: I meant to refer to Pinkfreud’s link to the funny pic, instead. Because one animal sight-gag deserves another…
What? Nobody remembers Jimmy Carter’s killer rabbit?
There ARE lions roaming the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains–that’s for sure. There are probably 4 or 5 wandering around between Pacifica and Ben Lomond.
BUT…they couldn’t find any sign; on his clothes or on the trail, just a day or two after the “attack”. That sounded fishy to me.
Who knows, there could be an incident next week. It is their habitat, after all. Too bad we like to build houses on the edge and walk around in the forests, I guess.
You must be psychic blondebear!
Idiot!
Yep- Whiting Ranch, again. Petting a lion cub? How fucking stupid can one guy be? She should have killed him and eaten him…
She would have if it had actually happened.
It was probably just a feral cat.
A really big feral cat? Eeeek…
Would you believe a large angry squirrel?
How about a thorny bush?
