Mountain Lions!

We just ended our third week in Sequoia National Forest. With many highlights to write about, I must share the most epic of them all:

Yesterday, while hiking back to the truck (the glorious truck that would take us home, since it was the end of the week and we were exhausted), admittedly tuckered out and shuffling, I looked down and stopped short. There in the sand, atop OUR thirty minute old boot tracks, were mountain lion tracks! I asked my partner, Ben, if it was what I thought it was. As we were bent down looking at the track, we noticed several more along the old, reclaimed service road, and heading in the same direction we were heading. Since it had taken us no more than thirty minutes to hike out to our station and start the hike back, the tracks were at the oldest twenty five minutes old. Which meant that we had likely walked right by the cat! We very quickly righted ourselves and looked up and around instead of down at the track. Listening intently around us, we cautiously continued towards the truck, which was about 500 meters away. While we walked, we took note that the great cat was still using the road ahead of us, perhaps very closely ahead of us, and the angry birds and squirrels up ahead confirmed that we were indeed close to the cat. As we walked together, Ben pointed at another set of much larger tracks. There were TWO mountain lions walking the road.

Well shit.

I am a stickler about carrying my bear spray. Anyone who knows me knows that I always carry it (I was taught well by my good friend Bobbie). Bear spray shoots fifteen feet and promises to deter any charging animal from eviscerating you (that is, of course, if you draw faster than they can run. Which isn't always likely.). Stronger than military-grade mace, it will put the largest grizzly bear on his behind and send mountain lions screaming like babies. As my luck would have it, I noticed yesterday morning that the safety trigger on my bear spray had been lost in the field, and I decided to take the spray off my pack for this short, last hike lest I accidentally spray myself . What could possibly go wrong in thirty short minutes on an abandoned service road?

Completely ridiculous.

Armed now with only a rock (which would probably just piss something off even more and make them decorate the nearest fir with my entrails like a holiday tree in retaliation), Ben and I were anxious as we slowly advanced to the truck. In most cases, a black bear will only charge you if defending a cub or a food source. A grizzly bear has a considerably more sour temperament and will do the same thing, but with more unpredictability and often without being provoked. Moose are stupid and angry and not to be trusted. The mountain lion is none of these things, yet all of these things, and probably the most dangerous, as they are silent and will usually only engage with another animal if they are going to kill it. In short, a bear will mock charge you, size you up as a competitor or a threat, but a mountain lion almost always has one thought: can I kill this? With many friends having been stalked by the mountain lion, it is not an encounter I craved on foot. Even as I type, my friends and I are discussing how bear spray is not a competitive weapon against the speed of power of a mountain lion.

And now, almost comically, Ben and I were walking alongside these tracks. We realize we are upwind of the track direction (meaning they couldn't smell us). As I'm about to shout out, make a lot of noise, we suddenly hear a crash around the corner. The crash is very big and very fast and to our right, and very seriously close. Milliseconds later, a second crash echoes to our left. The birds and squirrels are angry. Ben and I freeze like prey, waiting for more sound. Nothing.

The wind had suddenly shifted us downwind of the cats (which in this case was in our favor, but that is not always so...). With this wind change, we startled the two cats and they bolted before our noise could do the same thing. We were only 100 meters from a mother mountain lion and her half-grown cub! With the hair on my neck rising and my senses on overload, we also bolted through the space we last heard sound, making noise and trying to sound big. In doing so, we noticed more tracks, but these ones were pointing in our direction.

The cats were walking right towards us!

When we got to the truck, we reasoned by the tracks that the two cats had walked along the road to our truck (likely drawn to the smell of rotting chicken in the cooler) and had balked at the sight of the vehicle. Turning back, they backtracked their own tracks up the road the way they had come, which was right towards us. We were closing the distance to one another in a very short amount of time. Thankfully, I noticed that first track and we were as ready as we could have been as opposed to what would could have easily been a bad situation as we hiked in exhausted silence. And this all took place in a very short period of time.

One hell of a thrill! I consider myself competent and able in the field, but the laws of nature are simple: let your guard down and you die. Always a chatterbox in the field, I don't think many days pass where wildlife doesn't know exactly where we are, and being ever vigilant in observing our surroundings helps keep us safe. By noticing the faint tracks in the sand, we knew what was there, but being tired probably assisted us in getting close to the cats because of the wind direction and our lack of noise.

The smaller of the two mountain lion tracks.

A great run in Sequoia! Lots of fishers, hills, bears, and beautiful scenery. And, as we've found, there are a few cougars in the area! More on that later...

Thought For The Day

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'"
― Hunter S. Thompson

Run 1, Or, I'm Tired of Katy Perry

I'm currently taking a break from cooking and packing to spend the month of July camping in Sequoia National Forest for this next run, where things are sure to be a tad more unbridled than the last run. However, the last three weeks involved plenty of adventure as my partner Rachel and I began station checks for mustelids. With half of our stations at higher elevation (7,000 and 9,000 ft) and the other half at 4,500 ft, we had a nice mix of easier vs. more difficult hikes. I finally saw fisher tracks! This is my first experience with fishers ( Martes pennanti), and while I've previously only seen a few marten (Martes americana) tracks, it's been a blast viewing photos of different species at our camera stations. Rachel and I had one set of stations where, every single week, bears would come and steal our bait, and one week a bear grabbed the cord holding our camera to the tree and chewed it off. Another bear was camera shy and slapped the camera to face another direction so he could snack in private. As I mentioned in the last post, I can't share project photos, but I can share the stories... for example, seeing my first wild flying squirrel on camera, or a black bear sow with a very curious cub.

We had one marten who was very angry at the track plate box and flipped it in the process of tearing out the back wire to get at the bait, two weeks in a row. I was surprised that the little weasels have the strength to do so, but I've been assured that they have really bad attitudes (reminds me of bobcats!). Rachel and I were unsure if it was a marten (we found scat at the box) or a bear ripping up the box, as most often the bears are guilty of "womping" the track plate boxes to get the meat inside. To determine the culprit, Rachel and I laid a large log over the box so that a bear could still lift it, but not a 1kg (two pound) marten. Sure enough, when we came back last week, the marten had conceded and entered the track plate box to get his prize rather than tear the box to pieces.

Rachel and I found lots to talk about this last month. Her and I are similar in our ability to talk, quite literally, about anything. We discussed everything from grad school to baking to research projects we'd worked on to why that particular hill totally sucked to... Katy Perry. Actually, we didn't really talk about Katy Perry. Rather, we talked about how we didn't want to talk about Katy Perry. You see, when I was on the bear project last year, I lived with five men in the woods all summer. I learned a lot about what men want in a woman, and I learned a lot about this particular performer. The discussion about how I got tired of hearing about female celebrities stuck, and from then out became a metaphor for which everything we didn't want to do, or hear on the radio, or disliked. While I'm sure this is not the household legacy the singer envisioned for herself, the metaphor became an expletive when faced with a particularly rotten piece of chicken not stolen by a carnivore: "This chicken stinks! Katy Perry!"

Rachel recording data

Two weeks ago we saw a ringtail run right in front of us on the road! Ringtails (Bassariscus astutus) are mammals in the raccoon family and are sometimes referred to as ringtail cats. Neither raccoon or cat, these little mammals are generalist omnivores, eating whatever is available, from fruits to insects to small mammals. They are adorable!

 A ringtail, post-release, from another project last fall here in the Sierras. Photo by M Cancellare

To my mother's terror, I also saw my first wild rattlesnake! Rachel worked in the Sonoran desert for a year and has a lot of experience with rattlesnakes, so she helped me get as close as possible in attempts to take a photo. Sadly, the little guy was pretty scared, so we opted to leave him alone as opposed to agitate him with the camera. Next time!

 Lower elevation, in rattlesnake territory

While embarking on one extremely miserable route to a station (it took us one hour to hike 200 meters downhill), through brush, burrs, poison oak, and a lot of Katy Perry's, we were rewarded at our wits' end by a very rare encounter. As Rachel barreled through some very nasty vines, I paused a few feet behind to contemplate my next step and catch my breath. Suddenly and silently, I caught movement about six feet in front of me. A screech owl alighted on the branch right in front of me and stared at me very intently. In that moment, I was very happy to be wearing my sunglasses, because she did not look happy with me. I started slightly when  heard a rapid clicking and thrashing to my left, and when I turned I was met with two more pairs of yellow moon eyes. Juvenile screech owls! The adult in front of me suddenly took off, likely trying to lure me away from her young, who were obviously learning to fly. One of the fluffy juveniles was comically hanging sideways onto a vine and clicking at me rather angrily. The little bird had apparently tried to fly away and landed in a rather compromising position instead. His wings outstretched, I watched him silently from two feet away, both of us pondering our next move. He decided first and took off, narrowly missing my face and crashing to the ground right at my feet. I wish I had picked him up immediately, but I wasn't sure if it would be too stressful; I wasn't really concerned about the horrible bite I would have received (one of our crew members has worked with owls before and said it wouldn't have been horrible for the bird if I'd helped him out of the vines). Fortunately for the owl, another take-off was all he needed to escape the vines that were limiting his training session, and he flew to the tree above me and perched. The second juvenile regarded me coolly, seemingly unafraid like his sibling and every bit the wise characters of movies, so I moved in with my camera to get photos. By this time Rachel had crept back to take some photos, and I was able to get two feet from the owl for a good snapshot.

 Isn't he adorable?!

Well, it's 8:45pm and I'm supposed to be in bed in an hour and I still have tons to pack for camping this week in Sequoia, so I've got to cut this posting short. Katy Perry!

Disclosure: I often blast Katy Perry songs on the radio when driving in the field truck with the windows down.

Week 1 Recap

The time lapse between posts can only be explained with a combination of no internet access and an extremely busy month! My previous post left off with crew training, and since then we have been unleashed into the wilds of the Sierra Nevada to chase mustelids and acquire battle wounds (also known as knowledge).

As Forest Service employees, our schedules are 4-10's, or four days out of the work week. As a result, these days usually range between nine and thirteen hours. The first week of real work saw me paired with one of the Student Conservation Organization volunteers, Clark, who is a fellow North Carolinian!

Day One, Go! Photo by C. O'Bannon.

The first week of the run (or the time period for which sampling units are, uh, sampled) involves the put-in of survey materials: camera stations and track plate stations. Each station consists of one camera and one track plate, and our job consists of navigating to these pre-set points (which have been sampled repeatedly over the last ten years for both fisher and marten presence) via GPS data and creating the station. For each person within a team, that means a backpack full of nails, tools, chicken wire, raw chicken, cameras and bear-proof camera boxes (those puppies are heavy!), and the materials to build a track plate. Oh, and barbed wire. I learned to hate barbed wire last summer on the bear project, so I'm happy to only have to use small strips of it (the wire catches hair samples from visiting animals). Combined with food, water, and whatever else one can fit into a pack, we're carrying between thirty and forty pounds on the put-in week. 

Translation: Running and strength training was a joke.

I was flattered to find that Clark considers me a field veteran, which, despite making me sound old, means I actually know difficult field work. Hell, I tore my hip flexor doing field work. The second day of my field research career had me climbing cliffs not covered in my rock climbing class, and I lived. I am very fortunate to have done and seen some amazing things, but I must say that hiking up to ten miles a day, uphill, with that kind of weight is not something you train for other than by hiking ten miles a day, uphill, with forty pounds on your back. The first week was a little bit of a challenge, I admit! But, a few cool things happened and it ended up being a challenge met with zest (ok, and a few expletives).

On day one, as Clark and I turned onto a FS road that I commented was exactly the kind of road you see bears or bobcats or coyotes on at 7 in the morning, lo and behold, a bear ran right in front of our truck! First one of the season, and if you know me, you know I am always excited for a wildlife sighting. A real wildlife sighting- not the interactions in parks where wildlife are conditioned to human presence, or even holding a wild animal under anesthesia (though that is a priceless experience)- rivals all experiences because, for a fleeting moment, we get to see an animal being just that. It's unbridled, sometimes dangerous, and awesome, because while we still startle one another, for two or five seconds we get to witness a creature unharmed and untainted by anything unnatural.

The Sierras are absolutely and breathtakingly beautiful.  The waterfalls, the trees, the wildflowers, and the wildlife are surreal individually, but when all together in one place, the senses are overwhelmed. There was even snow at the beginning of the month! One of my sites for Run 1 was at about 9300 ft in elevation, and our first day of work was an unexpected 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I love winter, and I miss snow, so despite being a tad brisk, Clark and I worked well together setting up our stations on day one and throughout the week. Per station, the chicken is placed in a wire "burrito" and nailed to a tree with gun brushes surrounding the bait to collect hair samples from whatever visits the station, with photos capturing the activity. Nearby, a small piece of meat invites animals into the trackplate box, where the sooted track plate catches their footprints (and thus species identification) on contact paper, and where barbed wire at the entrance might snag a hair sample. Oh, and the scent lure. Who can forget the scent lure? During training we combined a magical mixture of skunk scent glands, animal urine (I forget the species), and some other ground up wildlife secretions with lanolin to create a glorious spread that smells like rotten garlic, horseradish, and a lot of dead stuff. We spread that on the bait tree to hopefully entice the mustelids to visit our stations (but everything else loves it too). And yes, I somehow managed to get it in my hair that first week.

 

Clark holds his breath while mixing our scent lure, called Gusto. No gusto was involved in the mixing of this Gusto.

One of our sites from the put-in week was unrealistically gorgeous: any one of the LOTR movies, or the show Game of Thrones, or another Jurassic Park, could be filmed in this location. We navigated through drones of honey bees as they buzzed like one great machine in a field of bear clover, which is a thigh-high brush with daisy-like buds and a sappy residue that covers your boots and pants. All week, but particularly at this site, we were visited by hummingbirds, presumably attracted to our bright yellow helmets as they darted past our ear and over our heads or perched on a nearby branch and chirped at us. Another part of the site was also covered with poison oak, but since this project might as well have stock in Tecnu (a lotion that removes poison oak and ivy oils), we were okay. Shortly after the photo below was taken, Clark and I encountered a herd of domestic cows (farmers and ranchers can lease public land for grazing) and were chased downhill. 

Note: cows run fast, especially when angry and on loose substrate.

  

 Do I look hot? It was 95F and six miles uphill!

 Vista from atop one of our sites.

Photo taken at about 5500 ft elevation, facing East, from a vista at one of our sites.

Glorious view of Huntington Lake, just before our bear sighting.

Once the put-ins are complete for each run, we then sample each site once a week for three weeks. This involves collecting hair samples, track plate prints, and photographs of our visitors. I'm not able to share the wildlife camera photos with you on this site, but I do have a lot of cool stories to share for this run! Unfortunately, Clark was only my partner for the first week, because we have a position called the "Lone Wolf" where someone is responsible for working with crew leaders to accomplish things both in the field and in the office, and with a weekly rotation for this position, I traded off to a new partner for week two onwards when Clark became the Lone Wolf. We're in the office all week, which means I have time to access internet, which means I will be posting my adventures (and tons more photos) with Rachel very soon!


AND HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! I'm so thankful to live in a country where I can pursue my vividly wild and ambitious dreams.

YEAH!