While home nursing a sudden summer cold today, I had time to do some more mountain lion research, including calling Fish & Game AGAIN because I never got a return call. This time I was told that the person who took my message yesterday gave it to the wrong trapper...the one who handles animal issues east of Hwy. 101...apparently there is also a trapper who handles the west side of Hwy 101. Trapper doesn't even seem to be the right word, since they generally don't trap and move mountain lions. At any rate, I left another detailed message (I'm sure they're starting to wonder about this woman in Forestville...just imagine if they knew I lived at a place I call The Lazy Vegan!) and hope to hear back tomorrow. In the meantime, thanks to many mountain lion videos on YouTube, I was dismayed to view one in which a mountain lion cleared some panel fencing (exactly what we have) in one effortless bounce to grab a lamb and then leap back over. So the fencing does nothing to protect the donkeys. I've read that the only true protection for livestock is to put them in a barn at night. If the real estate Gods smile upon us this year, maybe we'll build a state-of-the-art BIG barn and do just that. For now, though, I'm thinking good thoughts and am hoping that the motion sensor light (which works great- we discovered that at certain angles in the corral the donkeys set it off themselves!) and cleaning the property of all pet food and water will be protection enough. And I can always start sleeping out there with my boys...although after reading some other accounts of mountain lion attacks on humans (which I decided were far too graphic to be blog material), including one absolutely amazing story about a woman fighting off a lion to save her three children (which she did, but she died in the process), I frankly don't even want to contemplate fighting a lion. ANYWAY, enough of all this lion business...blame it on the cold, but for whatever reason it has become a new obsession of mine! Mountain lions on average eat one deer a week...UGH.
Check out the donkey video toward bottom of blog...just your average day at The Lazy Vegan!

Toby and Bravo check out some smells. Naturally I instantly thought MOUNTAIN LION.


The boys don't miss a movement on the road. Here they watch a woman walk by.