Mountain Lions and What our Dogs Know

This was the very beginning of a crazy phase with oodles of mountain lions coming past my trail cameras.

First, on 4/16, one sniffed an area frequently marked by lions and bobcats.

Then, on 4/21, a mountain lion came past the same trail camera.

He must have leaped from his position in the previous photo to right in front of the camera because the time stamps are only 1 second apart.

I think he was sniffing the trail camera and the scent of my hands. You can see something that looks like whiskers in the upper left. I think that the rest of the photo is his neck.

More sniffing...

He decided to walk away.

He went back to sniffing the spot where all the cats mark, before departing. It turns out that this was not the only lion nearby on that night. I'll show you the other one in a upcoming post.

Many thanks to my girl, who told me that odd things were going on in our forest before I had any idea. Sniffing...

And staring...

Our dogs know so much more about the natural world than we do, mainly due to their noses and their instincts. I try very hard to read the signals that they are sending me.