Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters

Cougar

Cougar 16 Cougar The cougar in my yard is twenty paces away paused in midstride , its right foreleg stuck out in front. I am standing in my cabin, sun shining, when its tawny shape passes outside my window. At first there is only movement, a feline way of creeping low. The cougar slips along the edge of a woodpile, the curvaceous bend of its body as supple as wind. It slinks left to right, no up and down motion, and only when it steps from the shadows does reality come into view. I am looking at Felis Concolor—mountain lion, panther and puma, catamount and cougar, courage and kitten magnified in sun-gilded fur. Its coat is a light tan mixed with gray, white under the chin and a white belly that blends into the new snow.I watch as it crosses into the open, shoulder muscles at work like liquid bricks under its fur. The cougar stops and stands in profile. Large chamomile eyes swivel and look up into mine. Its tail is drooped in an elongated S, shoulders rounded above the sweep of its back. Powder-puff ears are turned toward me and its face is centered around the pink heart of a nose. I can make out the thin lines of its whiskers, also the indent of lips pulled back in their perpetual smile.The cougar lifts its head and dignity oils its fur. It raises a boxing glove paw as if in greeting and I know my one wish above all others is to spend time with one of these cats, to hold and to pet one, to hear one of them purr. Wild Delicate Seconds 17 “That lithe swinging of its rhythmical easy stride/which circles down to the tiniest hub/is like the dance of energy around a point/in which a great will stands stunned and numb.” –—Rainer Maria Rilke The cougar sets its paw down ahead in the snow. It lifts the other. It is starting to drift,to move again like a fog.The cougar is flowing across my yard,meter-long body undulating like water cascading downhill. It wends its way around another woodpile and stops to look at me again, holding the same fringed paw bent at the wrist, pausing before setting it down in the snow. Now it leaps and balances on the stump of a tree, teetering there, four feet bunching together compressing the snow. We are given these days, don’t you know, to do with as we will. I rush outside with my camera.The cougar fixes me with its wine-yellow eyes, the thick rope of its tail lashing once, twice. ...