From the BBC comes this little tale of Jack Russells in America:
A mountain lion found it was no match for a Jack Russell terrier which trapped it up a tree on a farm in the US state of South Dakota.
The dog's owner, Chad Strenge, heard frantic barking near the family's farm in Colman, Moody County.
He discovered the 150lb (68kg) male lion, also known as a cougar, clinging to the top of a tree with 17lb (8kg) terrier Jack at the bottom.
Mr Strenge, helped by his dog, chased the mountain lion and shot it dead.
"He trees cats all the time," Mr Strenge told The Argus Leader newspaper. "I suppose he figured it was just a cat."
Thanks to Shirley T. at the Yes Biscuit blog for this clip!
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4 comments:
Awesome! Thanks for this!
I always get strange looks and exclamations of downright disbelief when I tell folks that YES, terriers CAN tree mountain lions.
There are no better safeguards from cougars than a pack of smallish barking dogs.
Was it really necessary to kill the cougar?
I read your blog just about every day, I enjoy it very much.
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Good question, and the answer is clearly NO.
This lion was running scared and trying to get away. It was treed and was no threat to anyone up a tree. The man who shot it is a yahoo and a pin head.
Now, having said that, this lion's future was also on a very bad trajectory. It was clearly coming into an area where people lived, straying on to farms, etc. Any lion that does this is going to die sooner or later, from gun shot or vehicle impact. I hate to see it happen to lions or wolves or bears, but the simple truth is that we are wrestling with what to do with these big predators when they enter the edges of human settlement.
The good news, of course, is that we have a problem and we are struggling with the ethics.
We have a problem because we have about 40,000 lion now (more wild lions in North America than in all of Africa) and about 500,000 black bear, and many thousands of wolves over an expanding range. This is good news! It is also good news that we are asking what is right. In the old days, we simple shot or laid out poison. Now we are at least asking questions about ethics and balance.
My own feeling is that we need to take all sheep and cattle ranching off of US Forest Service and BLM lands. Public lands ranching COSTS taxpayers money and degreades the land. We need to end it and turn that land over to the Ancient Land Manager -- Mother Nature. And Mother Nature's land managers include both wild ungulates like deer, elk, wild sheep, bison and pronghorn, but also large predators like wolves, bear, and lion.
Having made the deal to leave all public lands for wild animals, incuding large predators, the quid pro quo is that when these same predators stray on to private farm and ranch land, they bcome fair game. Private fencing, to put it simple, is the division street.
But just because one CAN kill something, of course, does not mean that one should. There is a time and place for simple awe, and I think a lion up a tree deserves it. If this farmer had called the DNR, they would have been out in 20 minutes and pepper-sprayed that lion back into the forest and woods where he probably would have stayed for the rest of his life still shaking his head from the experience of the one time he poke his head out past a fence. That was the right outcome, but this many with a shotgun decided he could get a free hunt out of it instead and he jumped at the chance. Welcome to the west, where the land is large and the self-restraint is too often small.
P.
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Good question, and the answer is clearly NO.
This lion was running scared and trying to get away. It was treed and was no threat to anyone up a tree. The man who shot it is a yahoo and a pin head.
Now, having said that, this lion's future was also on a very bad trajectory. It was clearly coming into an area where people lived, straying on to farms, etc. Any lion that does this is going to die sooner or later, from gun shot or vehicle impact. I hate to see it happen to lions or wolves or bears, but the simple truth is that we are wrestling with what to do with these big predators when they enter the edges of human settlement.
The good news, of course, is that we have a problem and we are struggling with the ethics.
We have a problem because we have about 40,000 lion now (more wild lions in North America than in all of Africa) and about 500,000 black bear, and many thousands of wolves over an expanding range. This is good news! It is also good news that we are asking what is right. In the old days, we simple shot or laid out poison. Now we are at least asking questions about ethics and balance.
My own feeling is that we need to take all sheep and cattle ranching off of US Forest Service and BLM lands. Public lands ranching COSTS taxpayers money and degreades the land. We need to end it and turn that land over to the Ancient Land Manager -- Mother Nature. And Mother Nature's land managers include both wild ungulates like deer, elk, wild sheep, bison and pronghorn, but also large predators like wolves, bear, and lion.
Having made the deal to leave all public lands for wild animals, incuding large predators, the quid pro quo is that when these same predators stray on to private farm and ranch land, they bcome fair game. Private fencing, to put it simple, is the division street.
But just because one CAN kill something, of course, does not mean that one should. There is a time and place for simple awe, and I think a lion up a tree deserves it. If this farmer had called the DNR, they would have been out in 20 minutes and pepper-sprayed that lion back into the forest and woods where he probably would have stayed for the rest of his life still shaking his head from the experience of the one time he poke his head out past a fence. That was the right outcome, but this many with a shotgun decided he could get a free hunt out of it instead and he jumped at the chance. Welcome to the west, where the land is large and the self-restraint is too often small.
P.
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