It was 11 P.M., and I had a bat tucked into my jacket to keep it warm when a deer made a “chuff” alarm call somewhere nearby in the darkness. This was nothing new–the deer are most often making this alarm because they have caught scent of humans in their forest. My field partner and I often heard them while we worked late into the night, capturing bats in mist nets for the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database.
Still, this deer sounded close, and I reached up to switch my headlamp to a brighter setting to look around for it. I was surprised to catch a pair of glowing eyes hovering in the darkness directly across from me instead. It was dark now, but I knew the owner of those eyes must be standing on a cliff. Now why would a deer stare down at us from a cliff? I turned my light up to its brightest setting and froze. Long, long tail, sleek body, and small head. Not a deer.
“Caitlin!!” I hissed, “there’s a MOUNTAIN LION!”
“No way,” she said.
“Come look!” I said, thinking the lion might disappear before she could confirm it. But the lion stayed put in our spot lights, lolling on the cliffside. I tried to take some photos, which didn’t turn out well in the poor light, and then wondered what to do. I had a bat in my jacket, and the mist nets were still up. I glanced over at our mist nets and cursed–we had caught another bat, now of all times. Could we really handle bats with a mountain lion watching us from perhaps 30-40 meters away?
I struggled to do anything but keep an eye on the feline predator. I kept track of the position of the eye shine, which paced back and forth on the cliff above us. I hastily went through measuring the bat in hand, and then recorded data for Caitlin as she processed the bat in the net. Then, watching the lion as closely as I could, I helped take down the nets. We figured with a lion watching us so closely, it was time to call it a night. The lion moved around, watching us from different positions, but he/she didn’t come down the cliff. Caitlin and I both had our bear spray ready at our sides throughout takedown.
Finally we were packed up into our field vehicle. Caitlin got in the car, while I paused to take one last look. The lion seemed to have figured out we were leaving, because it stood up and stretched out magnificently, looking enormous. And also, I realized nervously, quite close to us, probably within a few strides of the big cat. She began to slink forward, and I hurried back to the car.
In hindsight, this was one of the coolest wildlife encounters I’ve had. However, I have since learned that a more proper response to a mountain lion hanging around is to haze the animal–shouting or throwing rocks to teach it that hanging around humans is no good. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind for our next encounter!
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