Face to Face with a Mountain Lion

That was the highlight of our weekend. Looking into the face of a mountain lion about 12" away. It was through glass, though.

We're trying to go on a few outings this year instead of our usual weekends of boredom. We decided to go to the California Living Museum on the outskirts of town to see the bears and birds and pet the goats on Saturday. It's a very small zoo with only native California species and despite the fact that we go there once a year or so, Keith has to read every sign about every animal so it takes us a while to wander the zoo, maybe two hours instead of the one hour at most that it takes to see everything.

It was really really windy at the zoo, which is against the foothills and above the river. The duck pond even had waves in it, the wind was blowing so hard. The owl was facing into the wind and it looked like he was having a hard time staying put on his perch instead of being blown off of it. Two of the raccoons were play fighting, at least I think they were playing. They were fighting over who got to sit in a bucket and one of them kept biting the other on the ear and the other one kept squealing. Because raccoon teeth probably hurt when they come in contact with your ear.

The last exhibit was the new California Cats, with a new pavilion with benches and big windows to look into their habitat. One one side they have bobcats, who were hard to find at first because they were curled up sleeping just like our house cats do all day. One of the two mountain lions was laying very close to the one of the windows sunning herself but the other one was pacing and going back and forth between the three windows. The back side of the exhibit is open with chain link fences and he kept pacing along the fence and then going from window to window. I finally figured out that he could hear kids voices and was trying to see them. He came right up to the window we were standing at, close enough to where if there were no window, you could reach out and touch him if he didn't bite your hand off first. He (or she) was just incredibly beautiful and it was so amazing to be so close to this big cat. He kept looking past us trying to find the (probably to his mind quite succulent and delicious) kids that were talking and yelling in excited kid voices.

Of course we forgot our camera so no close up pictures of a mountain lion. But I did find pictures on the zoo website, probably not the actual mountain lion at the zoo just some stock photo from somewhere.




Then yesterday we watched the Super Bowl of course. Keith fell asleep during the third quarter but managed to wake up in time for the end of the game. We were quite unimpressed with the ridiculous half time show. It would really be refreshing to see a half time show where the singers just sing. Not all this dancing and lights and casts of thousands. But I guess people don't just sing these days, it's all about how over the top you can be. Yuk.