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Cats in the Night

This cougar's name is Cruz, a name suggested by what we call a river that occasionally runs through town:  the Santa Cruz.  

I thought they should nave named the cat, Stevens.  

All my life, I have known that there were cougars in the woods around, in Western Washington.  I never saw a cougar in the wild, and rarely even in captivity.  I do recall a pair of cougars (I think it was a pair) at Wilderness Trek on the slopes of Mt. Rainier.


 Here in Tucson, at the foot of Mt. Lemmon, cougars are commonly called mountain lions.  Many-named, these large, close relatives of house cats, are also called pumas, catamounts, panthers, and more.

Cruz was rescued, about five years ago, in California, and now lives at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

We have another, part-time, famous cat in our part of the State.  It is an area where a Canadian mining company proposes to dig a monstrous hole and extract copper ore.  Even though jaguars are rare in Arizona, almost certainly coming up from Mexico, only a few miles away, it is almost certain that "El Jefe", as he is cometimes called (The Boss), is going to have to go somewhere else because jaguars are not in charge here:  copper is.  Profit is.

cnn.com
It is too bad, but these are not good times for public lands.  I do wonder, though, if we really need another massive hole in the ground.  But we have been assured that the small streams will be protected--Won't they?--and that we will learn to love the pit left behind, where the trees used to be, where once or twice a jaguar was sighted.

Cougars and Jaguars have no natural enemies, other than human beings.


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