And in other, unrelated news thte U S Fish & Wildlife dept has unveiled its new logo. Its a striking figure of one of their agents standing on a beach with his head fully buried in the sand. Its to honor the Ostrich population which they say is dwindling.
I'm just a dumb ole hillbilly. I have no idea what the officials we pay to do things hope to accomplish. They'll pretty much do as they please and we'll continue paying for it. Our government seems to have a lot of useless people doing useless stuff on our dime. Yes, there is waste that can be cut. We see a good example of it right here.
I'm kind of a fan of reading reports in the papers (and online) of our local mountain lion sightings. I've not personally seen one myself, only sign. But where there's smoke, there's fire. When someone see's one, the officials say its not proof, its only an unconfirmed sighting. When they see hard evidence, its still not proof to them. I'm thinking they need a shot up carcass. Maybe what they really need is a wounded one tossed in their offices.
Back about 1981 or 82 a friend and I were hiking in an uninhabited area. Its really close to our local airport, and consisted of 3 fairly large farms that had been acquired as an investment for an industrial park. The region had been used for years by dirt bikes and jeeps. One of the trails went down a ridge toward the creek at the bottom. It was kind of wide, maybe 10' and was at the time loose dirt (chewed up by dirt bikes.) About 50 to 75' along I realized I'd been seeing footprints coming uphill. I stopped to look and realized they were big prints, with the pad being wider than my palm.
My friend asked what those were. Bobby wasn't much of an outdoorsman. I told him it was the sound of my mother calling me. At the time I was in my 30s and he didn't understand. Didn't matter, I was heading back to my truck. He was just confused and continued to question me. No, they weren't dog prints because dogs have toenails that tend to dig into the dirt as they move uphill. No, we don't have bears (do now) and bears have even bigger claws that you can really see in prints. Finally he got the idea. Then he asked how big a cat it would have to be to have that size feet. My only answer was a really big dog only has feet half that size.
So I called the local game warden/wildlife guy. He was all ears. Then he asked if I would take him there. So I said sure, except I was going to carry a pistol. He said he was too.
My friend wanted to go along too, so we met in another hour or so. The state guy also had along his handy dandy camera. Because it had been dry the prints were easy to find and we took the time to "mess with them". Meaning a little finger pressure on the high points to see if they crumbled (they did).
The official answer was they were clearly cat prints, and from the size, the critter was maybe 150 or more pounds. But he stopped short of saying they were wild mountian lion tracks. His possible answers were it could be someone with an exotic pet out exercising it. It included maybe an african lion, etc. I didn't buy it, and he was smiling. His logic also allowed for an animal that had gone feral, with mountain lion being one of them. Or just as easily a wild one passing through the region. He didn't think it was one sustaing itself because more domestic animals would be missing and possible sightings. But he liked the tracks!
