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Beverley, Thanks for the thoughts and response to my site. Yes, I put
Ruby down on April 2nd. which was her 23rd birthday. She'd been with me
since she was 10 days old. Last year she hit the World Longevity Record
for the oldest Mountain Lion EVER LIVED. ( Must have been all the
roadkill room service and Haagendaz Ice Cream!) Over her life, we did
environmental education and wildlife safety programs for over 100,000
people throughout Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and California, in National
Parks and communities everywhere. So she had an incredible impact in her
life and hopefully planted a seed in children all over, about having
responsibility and respect for the creatures we share this planet with,
and to understand the powerful importance yet delicate balance of
biodiversity and the reality of the "food chain". ( Everybody is someone
elses lunch) What you see in the slides so far is just a smidgen of the
hundreds of pics that have been pouring in of her. Damn that cat had
some famous friends! Her first picture was with Jimmy Stewart. I just
downloaded one that someone took when we were in Montana, of her fully
stretched out in a leap into a friends swimming pool to get out to me. (
I almost peed my pants while I was also in tears, as the picture brought
back the memory of her reaction when she hit the water and discovered
she had to swim the length of the pool. Boy did she look like a very
unhappy 175lb. cougar when she climbed out shaking her paws) My
retirement, divorce and her death have made for a very hard year. I feel
blessed every morning to wake up, look out my window and see my ponies
and a white buffalo in my front yard under those mountains though. It's
been a wonderful life.You are lucky to have the Puma as one of your
medicine animals, they have a strong spirit. Wish you could have met
her. Sure am glad she taught my horses to be brave and confident on the
trail. A final tidbit. If you Google me and go to the article by the
Telluride Watch about Ruby, you will read that she had an even more
extensive profile than you know from the slides. When I get her ashes
back next week I will be sending a few ounces into a company called
"LifeGem" that takes the ashes of your loved one and under months of
heat and pressure, is able to manufacture a man-made DIAMOND. So I will
have a keepsake memory of her. A gem unique in all the world, just like
she was. (after all, she outlasted the husband and was more faithful and
predictable too!) The rest, we will scatter on horseback, on a trail she
would follow me on while I rode our property. Believe it or not, I think
the horses know she's gone and miss her too, as they have been grazing
right up next to the big enclosure all week. I hope that the other info
that this thread generated will have resulted in all of us being more
"bear aware" and has added some more tools to our equestrian trail
training so that we feel and ARE safer out there and can more fully
enjoy what we see between our horses ears. Yesterday started my first
ever posts on Ride camp and I have been a little too long winded on this
subject so I'll shut up now. Thanks for reading and again, the intent
was strictly to HELP us make positive choices and give us more tools.
Melissa Margetts
Beverley H. Kane, MD wrote:
Melissa,
What an incredible site, slide shows, and life! I just took about 45' out of
my busy day to watch, captivated! Couldn't turn it off!
I take it Ruby has gone over the rainbow bridge recently, is that correct?
The photo "last good walk" was heartbreaking for what it didn't show.
Ah, her slide show just loaded. Tears! Puma is one of my medicine animals.
On 4/16/08 1:25 AM, "Melissa Margetts Ms. Kitty" <margetts@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Carla,
I wanted to reiterate the *possibility* of desensitizing or
"conditioning" a skittish horse to predators on the trail. (re: read
below) If you click this link http://myspace.com/sweetmayleesa and
just go to "view my pics", you will see a few of the photos that I
specifically just posted tonight. (go to the pics so you don't have to
watch all the slide-show) There are pictures on there of an article in
Western Horsemen, of Pat Parelli using my mountain lion at a clinic
about 15 years ago to show people how to do exactly that. If I remember
right, he was demonstrating this "Super-sacking-out", using a
"volunteer" horse who was scared of flapping jackets, hats, dogs, the
whole wazoo. As you can see, he had me get the lion on top of the cab of
a truck so it was even ABOVE the horse and more scary. After he worked
with the horse for not very long, it just stood there under the lion
even when it hissed at him. Below are the suggestion that I posted about
using predator "scent" from trapper outlets. It is best to use the urine
scent, sow in estrus scent, or feces scent on the rag that you hang in
the horse stall, NOT the FOOD scents that are used as attractants. Here
is also a link to where that can be obtained.
*http://www.wildlife.com/Portals/wildlife/bookandarticles/huntingscentbook07.p
df*.
and also a great pamphlet on understanding bear behavior, coexisting
with wildlife and what to do upon encounters.
www.*bearsmart.com*/bearFacts/Communication.html -
// Yikes! I hope this will settle this whole topic down by giving tools
for solutions instead of stepping on more "personal ethics" toes.
RE: Melissa wrote:
Now this may also sound like a bizarre idea to some folks, but if you
have a really skittish horse and you are very worried about their,
"buck, bolt and burn" behavior if they were to encounter predator scent
on the trail, There are trapper suppliers that have paste scents for all
different kinds of critters. You can spread "Bear" or "Mountain Lion"
scent on a rag and leave it tied in your horses stall so they get a
little "desensitized" to the odor. I would rather have an alert and
wary, yet MANAGEABLE horse in that situation, rather than trying to control a
horse that thinks he's going to get eaten by some firebreathing dragon if he
were to encounter a predator on the trail.
I have owned a mountain Lion for 23 years and many friends have come to get
buckets of lion poo to either put around their gardens to discourage the
deer from eating their crops or flowers, or to defuse their horses so
they will be able to ride past my property without an explosion.
