Nature is awesome until it starts eating your pets

Nothing quite illustrates how much we love nature, and how we can commune with nature like California. Florida is the example of how not to commune with nature.  There, you have bears busting up kidsbirthday parties, getting drunk, and swimming in pools.  You have a battle-royal between alligators and pythons in Fort Lauderdale’s back yard, literally.  But California, that’s the nature lover’s paradise. 

 

California coyote - awesome until it starts eating dogs

California loves nature so much, they are actually advocating building a ten milliondollar bridge so that cougars can cross the highway in Los Angeles and breed.  We are not talking about Susan Sarandon needing to get across the 101, or any other woman past 40 who is looking for a pony-boy and there’s no pedestrian bridge.  We are talking an actual cougar. A mountain lion.  A 400-pound silent killing machine.  You would think that if humans built a highway (which acts as a fire break – and fortuitously acted as a cougar-break) that was pretty effectively keeping mountain lions on the east side of the 101, the folks on the west side would be pretty cool with that.  No, California, with its budget deficits, wants to spend $10 million so a couple of cougars can cross the highway and mate, and increase in numbers.  Sounds awesome.  Sounds awesome in theory, until said 400-pound cougar gets in someone’s backyard and is hungry and their dog is fifth-meal to the cougar.

You say that could never happen. The good folks of California really, really love nature and wouldn’t let that happen. They have principles.  Well, those principles of love of nature just ran into the buzz-saw of loving their pets more.  Granted, these were coyotes, a less noble creature than the cougar.  Its innuendo is even less noble.  Its urban dictionary meaning for Coyote is someone who runs illegal immigrants across the border.  A cougar, as discussed above, is a hot older woman.  Advantage cougar. 

The LA Times reported last week that the good folks of Seal Beach had had enough of coyotes (the furry variety) eating their pets.  And then, their love of nature was trumped by their love of domestic animals, and a killing and trapping spree was approved to be unleashed.  Residents of Seal Beach approved a plan to trap and kill coyotes after the coyotes had brazenly started taking their pets in front of their very eyes.  Vicki Young told the paper how a coyote followed her into her house and snatched her little dog:  “When I turned around, the coyote had her in his mouth and he was running out the door,” Young said. “She died. He ate her.”  Love of nature meets love of fido and gets trounced in a hurry.

 

Woman whose dog was eaten by coyote and who is no longer cool with nature

What do you think is going to happen when you have 400-pound cougars mating and multiplying in the second-largest metropolis in the country?  It won’t be pretty.  Cougars need food. They hunt.  They don’t scrounge like coyotes are wont to do.  Fido is going to be dinner.  Then the $10 million foot bridge can be used by that other kind of LA cougar, so she can cross the 101.