Y'all, There has been another cougar sighting tonight here on our road. I've lost count, but it is at least the 5th sighting here within 3 or 4 miles of our house since June.....and 4 of those have been within a mile, 2 of those were on our property, and the other sighting (Rickey's) was a couple miles farther south.

And, to be specific about the location, (this description is primarily for Rickey, who is a neighbor of ours) it crossed from the east side of J. Rd. from the Cox Ranch to the Birdwell's property and then headed south towards Old Burkhart Rd. This is within a quarter-mile of the location where the two were seen crossing the road together a couple of months ago. That makes me wonder if they have a regular "route" that they sort of travel repeatedly.

Our daughter-in-law and granddaughter were driving south on our road headed towards our house tonight when a cougar crossed the road right in front of them. It was less than a mile from our house, and was headed directly towards the house from which a small dog disappeared a couple of days ago. I guess it likely is making its hunting rounds

Scott, To tell you the truth, when she said "I just saw your big cat crossing the road", I (yes, even me) was incredulous and thought she was teasing me. It isn't really that I felt sure 'it' or 'they' were gone, but until the little dog disappeared a few days ago, most of the recent sightings had been several miles south of us around Thackerville. I questioned her closely about its color, size, appearance, etc. to make sure it wasn't a bobcat or coyote and she assured me that she knew she was seeing a cougar. (She's a country girl and knows her animals.)

Honestly, I am sick of this and hope it will end soon. I cannot believe this continues to happen. Our animals had more or less calmed down and didn't seem as nervous or stressed in recent weeks, except for 2 separate days in the last 4-6 weeks or so, but they have been hyper the last 3 days, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.

I'm just gonna lock myself inside the house for the rest of the year.

Dawn

Not saying it isn't possible and definitely not saying you haven't seen one, but these discussions go on all over the eastern half of our country all the time. If a mountain lion was actually hanging around regularly such a small area, then there would be goats/sheep/cattle/horses/etc. missing regularly. A normal mountain lion would not be messing with pets on a regular basis.

Man, I hate to start this up again, but everyone needs to look at it objectively. There has never been a single one of these sightings in the main part of Oklahoma that have ever been confirmed despite numerous attempts to do so. It is virtually impossible to have two lions traveling together here since there has never in recent times been a female found this far from their home territory. No male lion would establish a territory here because there are no females, so the chances of these (many) multiple sightings even being mostly correct are virtually zero - unless this animal(s) was a one-time captive, which is not that uncommon. There are tens of thousand of trail cameras out there in our state, including probably hundreds in your county - not a single lion ever photographed (one possible exception). There are tens of thousand of hunters out in stands this week across the state - not a single photograph or piece of evidence found. You live within a mile or two of I-35 and the traffic there is incredible, even much night traffic, and yet none killed by cars ANYWHERE in the state in modern times whereas places that have even just 100 or so studied lions in their ENTIRE state have about 20 of them killed by cars each year in very remote areas because of how much the lions travel. The only lions that make the widely talked about scream are females in heat (and even then almost never heard) and yet so many people claim to hear it even in places where it is impossible to have female lions. And finally, most sightings in Oklahoma are of black lions and these have never existed in North America.

OK, that was the extreme counter-argument, and it goes too far, but that is the other side of this that should be weighed by anyone reading these threads and taking every opinion as a fact.

The most likely scenario is that one or two people saw a true lion passing through, the other sightings were of bobcats or other animals, the screams were of something else, and the animal taking the pets and small animals is also something else. But I admit, neither I nor anyone else has no way of knowing the truth, and anything is possible. At some point there will likely be a female get this far and maybe even find a male and reproduce before being killed. Your sightings could be this first one. It has to happen somewhere to someone.

And finally, if these claims of having a breeding and wild population of lions ARE true, then it should be relatively easy to get evidence of some kind. And since nobody there seems to be too interested in finding some evidence, I will BEG you guys there to get that evidence so that this case gets documented instead of a bunch of people standing around just talking about it and saying everyone who doesn't believe it all have something wrong with them. To put my money where my mouth is I will give $500 to anyone there in your "neighborhood" who brings forth the evidence THIS YEAR that cougarnet or even the local game wardens can verify as wild, native North American cougar. And if it turns out to be a confirmed female, I will give the person $1000. I know I'm an idiot, but doggone it, someone needs to do something and if it helps get the first 100% confirmation of a live one (or 2nd of a dead one) in our state then it would be worth it. (And yes, I am not including the end of the panhandle where there is now a small breeding population.) Dawn will be the money handler/distibutor and I'll e-mail her my info so I can be held accountable. (My wife does not need to know, so it will have to be in cash.)

God help me, I will probably regret this tomorrow. I hope I am not run off of gardenweb.

I love you guys!

Scott

I really don't believe that people are just seeing bobcats. When you have seen a cougar you know what you have seen. They are huge.

Scott, I'm just not going to argue with you because I know what has gone on here not only this year but ever since we moved here. I agree some sightings are likely mistakes, but the people I know who've seen them this year are very credible people.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that goats, guineas, chickens, cats and dogs have disappeared from our 'neighborhood' at an astonishing rate this year. We ALWAYS have bobcats, foxes and coyotes around year-round, and maybe 6 or 8 or 10 small pets and chickens will disappear in our neighborhood in a very bad year. In a good year, maybe 1 or 2 people will lose a chicken--likely to a hawk or bobcat. This year, the number, as close as I can tell just from anecdotal reports in our neighborhood, is about 65-70 over the last 10 months. Just from our property, we've lost about 27 guineas, 8 chickens and 2 cats in 2009. Add in 2 or 3 cats from right next door, 2 dogs from a house less than a mile away, several chickens from a place 1/2 mile from us, 12 or 13 chickens from a place south of us and Rickey, and several more guineas from a house about 2 miles north of us...and several goats from a place 2 or 3 miles south of us.....and I don't think any of us loses more than 1 or 2 animals a year, if we lose any at all, otherwise.

Our daughter-in-law almost hit this animal (I kinda wish she had 'cause then we'd have proof, but she's had her new vehicle for 4 days now so hitting a wild animal would not have been a good thing for her) and got a very good look at it.

I think there are multiple reasons no one (as far as we know) has gotten a photo---namely that most people have seen one while driving and they aren't driving down the road with a camera in their hand. By the time they stop the vehicle and whip out the cell phone camera, the animal is gone. Add to that the fact that a cell phone camera isn't going to be able to capture a photo in pitch-black darkness. And, it isn't like the cougars are standing and posing for photos--they are running! (sigh) Remember that when Rickey saw one along the highway (near the place which has had some goats 'taken'), he turned around and drove back to get a better look at it and it was gone. I'll repeat, it's not like this is a drive-thru wildlife park and the cougars are standing beside the road waiting to be fed by park visitors. They don't like to be seen and they take off quickly once they know they've been seen.

Maybe in some places, people walk around with a camera hanging from their neck and can shoot a photo at the drop of a hat, but that doesn't happen here. If you're out in a pasture or yard or garden, you're more likely to be busy working and not standing around looking for an animal to photograph. After the sightings this summer, I carried a gun and camera with me everywhere for weeks and weeks and it makes it hard to get your work done when you're having to keep track of where the cell phone, camera, and gun are. It is like the old saying 'a watched pot never boils'. I feel like I won't see a cougar again as long as I DO have a camera and gun with me, but I bet one would pop up if I wasn't carrying one.

Most of my neighbors have the attitude that if they see one, they're going to shoot it, dispose of it, and never tell a soul. Some of them imply that these animals have been seen and dealt with in that manner in the past although they won't come right out and say it. I understand why they feel that way and we've discussed it here before. They even tell me that seeing a cougar here is not 'that big' of a deal and that they've seen them here all their lives and know what to do to keep themselves safe.

Everyone here sees bobcats running through their fields or woods, hanging out on the edges of the woods, drinking at stock tanks and creeks, etc. No one really gets excited about them or foxes. They get a little more excited about coyotes being close to their chickens, rabbits, goats, foals, calves and domestic pets because of past predation problems with them. Some of my neighbors (and I wholeheartedly disagree with this practice) feel sorry for the skinny bobcats and coyotes in winter and actually put out food for them, which drives me nuts, but it is their property and they are free to do as they choose.

Scott, we have enough idiots with guns running around where they don't belong at this time of year....the last thing I want is people coming here looking for a cougar. Several of us have had 'errant shots' miss us by inches while we were on our own property and some idiot hunters were trespassing and hunting. It has happened to me--a bullet missed me by inches about 6 years ago and it is terrifying to have that happen while you are in your own pasture, working and minding your own business. It happened to one of our closest neighbors the same year. I know there are responsible hunters, but people who sneak onto private, posted property to hunt (and there are tons of them here) and who fire at anything that moves scare me to death and for good reason. So, I hope my neighborhood doesn't fill up with people trying to find a cougar because they're likely to get gun-happy and shoot somebody's brown calf or colt or dog....or even worse, they might schoot a person working in a field or in the woods or in their yard.

Jessaka, I agree. People (including me) who've seen them have been so shaken that they can hardly speak in the immediate aftermath of having seen one. A lot of them are so shook up that they won't go outside after dark following a sighting, they can't sleep, they can't even talk about it without getting emotional and speaking in a terrified, shakey, quavering tone of voice. If it hadn't happened to me, I likely wouldn't understand how frightening it can be.

One of our neighbors (now deceased and greatly missed) told me of being stalked by a cougar in the 1990s. He described walking backwards up the road that leads to his home and having it walk through the woods and pastures, keeping pace with him as he walked and waved a big stick at it. At that time, he was walking for exercise and to stay in shape. He was so unnerved by that incident that he never went walking again. He was a good man and a part-time preacher and I absolutely believed every word he said about the cougar incident. He was, in fact, telling me about his experience in an effort to convince me to stop taking my dogs for walks on our rural roads because he felt I was putting myself and the dogs in danger.

When I see a bobcat or fox or even a coyote, I just stand and watch them (assuming they aren't in our yard trying to get a cat or chicken) and say to myself "Oh, cool, I love seeing the wild things....". When I see a cougar, my body reacts with shaking/trembling, a racing heart, etc. It is a pure 'flight or fight' reaction--an involuntary reaction--it is the body reacting to what the eyes see. My body doesn't react that way when I see a lesser predator, but it does if I see the cougars...or if I see a wild pig...or if I have a deer run right at me in an aggressive manner instead of turning and running off when it sees me.

Carol, You never have a camera handy when you need one! The way that my hands shake when I see a cougar makes me think I'd be unlikely to hold a camera still enough to get a photo anyway.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of being afraid to walk outside on our own property. Every time I think that enough time has passed and that I am starting to feel safe again, someone I know sees a cougar near our home and I get all upset and nervous again. And, that's just the handful of people who live within a mile or two of us in any direction. If we've seen this many, who knows what other people in our county may have seen that we don't know about.

I believe our physical location is the reason all this is happened. Y'all have to remember that we're in the part of Love County that sticks down into Texas and we have the Red River to our immediate west, then several miles south of us, and then just about 3 or 4 miles east of us. All kinds of wild things live along the river to our west, south and east, and I believe that's why we see so much wildlife here, including the cougars.

Dawn

Nobody doubts the sencerity of the people who think they see the cougars, but the facts are that seldom are they really cougars. I can show you three pictures taken here in Oklahoma recently that many people circulated as being cougars and that do look like cougars, even at close range. Better examples would be the many people in your area that said they saw black panthers, plus your neighbor who was pretty experienced and thought the trapped animal was a lynx. These are not just mistaken but both not possible, but the people were sincere. If not for the picture of the "lynx" a lot of people would still be saying there are lynx in Love County.

Again, I am not saying the sightings are all mistakes, but the odds of having two wild cougars traveling together (that are different sizes) there is virtually impossible. It would be the greatest wildlife discovery in the great plains in our lifetime if it was true (worth my $1000). Your close encounter with the single cougar is very credible and would not be shocking based on your location. In fact, if you yourself talked with the game wardens face-to-face about that specific incident, I would bet they would be very serious about helping you out.

If a cougar is killing a goat or larger animal, the body will be dragged away from the kill sight to nearby cover and consumed over a few days. If the rancher does a good search (and what rancher doesn't), the drag trail and/or the body remains will very likely be found and you will have the needed evidence. If a pack of coyotes are doing the killing, it will usually not be found. Cougars leave LOTS of evidence where they live and kill. They are not hard to verify any time a large animal is taken, and they rarely prey on small animals when there are larger animals around.

Despite the location near the Red River, the human and auto population there is pretty dense relative to the areas where they have breeding populations and where there are still large number killed by autos despite the remote location.

One thing that I might need to tell everyone because maybe folks don't know it, is that Love County was originally 'settled' (and I use the term loosely) by outlaws fleeing from the Texas Rangers and local sheriffs in Texas. They'd commit all sorts of crimes in Texas, and flee into the Indian Territory because the terms of the compacts with the Indians stipulated that the lawmen could not come into the Indian Territory. Some of their descendents still have very, uh, sort of cocky attitudes, i.e. "they can't tell me what to do and they better not step foot on my land" in regards to any government employee. We have gone to fires on some of these properties only to have to cut locks and chains on gates to get to the fires and then to be run off by property owners who don't want anyone on their land and won't stand for it. (Makes you wonder what they're hiding.)

So, there's some families here whose grandfathers or great grandfathers were, um, colorful characters who had things in their past that their families now deny ever occurred even though some of those 'pasts' are well-documented in historical records from those times. Some of the old-timers here will periodically make remarks about someone, saying something like "They think they are all high-and-mighty now, but everyone knows their great-grandfather and his brother robbed banks and that's where they got the money to buy all that land..." So, I'm just saying that some people have a mindset that they don't have to abide by the laws, ahem, and they pretty much do as they please.

My rancher neighbors who thought the atypical bobcat was a lynx had often seen lynx at their former almost half-million acre ranch in the western US and had never seen an atypical bobcat...and bobcat and lynxes are related, so I understand the misidentification. And, no one here argued with them because we are used to seeing typical bobcats, not atypical ones, so we all learned from that too.

I think the goat guy would have had a hard time tracking and finding his missing goats because of his location. He is on a sort of peculiar-shaped piece of land that sits west of Hwy 77 and he has I-35 going literally right over his head (a big overpass we call the Eight-Mile Bridge) and beside his property (depending on where his property ends because I'm not sure about his north property line). For the cougar to take a goat off his property, it would have had to carry the goat across either 77 and the train tracks beside it or under the 8-mile bridge/highway and into an adjoining field on the other side of the highway. Most people here will search their own property but won't go onto someone else's ranch to search. I don't know if he searched for the goats, or found remains or what. I just know the goats disappeared and he couldn't find them and the cougar was spotted in the immediate area several times at about that same time.

It would be nice if we all could walk through our woods and search when animals disappeared, but 99% of the woods here have extremely heavy undergrowth that is virtually impenetrable. You have to climb under or over massive amounts of greenbrier and poison ivy to get into the woods. We have pathways we've cut through our woods, and if we don't cut back the stuff around them at least twice a year, the undergrowth takes them back. (We learned the hard way that maintaining paths through our woods is not smart because it enables poachers to travel thru/hunt on our land without our permission.) Most other people here don't bother even cutting paths through their woodlands, they just stay out of the woods and only maintain a fairly small open area around their home and let the rest of their land be wild and overgrown.

There's nothing I'd like more than for someone to be able to provide you with proof. That's one reason I carried that camera with me for ages even though it was very inconvenient.

When our second cat of the year disappeared 3 or 4 weeks ago, I didn't know what to think. At that point my animals weren't acting nervous or spooked like they have been since about Saturday. She'd been sickly (was the runt of the litter and was allergic to most pet food) all her life and hadn't been eating well in the week before she disappeared, so I felt there was a chance she just went off and died of natural causes. When that happens, though, you can usually find the animal's carcass by following the vultures....and we watched closely and didn't see any vultures around in the week or two after her disappearance. I still don't know what to think. However, my animals have been acting crazy since Saturday and that tells me something is around. Couple their crazy behavior with the missing dog up the road and the cougar-sighting last night and you get that feeling that all is not well.

When you leave your house to go to the store and the cats are laying around the yard or garden, and the dogs are laying around their dogyard....and then you come home, and the cats are on the roof of the house, LOL, and the big dogs are crowded up on the porch begging to come inside, and you just know that something unlikable crossed your property while you were gone and the pets saw it. I wish they could talk and tell us what they see.

I should add they my cats really aren't afraid of bobcats or coyotes. I think they foolishly believe a bobcat is 'just another cat' and that a coyote is just another dog. Our dogs don't chase our cats, so our cats aren't afraid of dogs. So, Scott, when our pets are all freaked out, I know something they don't like has been here.

I know our game wardens would likely help us if we went to them---they are terrific people, though I feel like they are stretched terribly thin here and very overworked. However, after seeing the pathetic trap they put out on Bill's property when he went to them for help, I've lost faith in their ability to trap a cougar. The trap they put out was so small I cannot imagine a cougar could or would squeeze into it.

I feel like if this is ever to be resolved, it will be resolved by someone with a gun and they may or may not choose to obey the law and notify the wildlife management people after they do whatever they choose to do. I've lived here long enough to understand the mindset of the folks who live here. We had a neighbor (they no longer live here) who took in a lot of dogs...we're talking 20 or 30 of them....and those dogs roamed our road and terrorized people. After one attacked me and two of our dogs, and Tim called and demanded they keep their dogs on their property, they made it clear that they could not and would not do anything to control their animals, so Tim called the S. O. The deputy who came to our house essentially told us that there's no leash law in the county and that our best option was to shoot the dogs that were bothering us. Although the thought of shooting a dog bothered me and Tim, the deputy just essentially told us that we "had to do what we had to do" to keep ourselves safe. That frustrates me but that's the mindset here...if an animal is bothering you, just shoot it and be done with it. I'd rather not shoot any animal. I'd rather see the cougars trapped and released in a very remote area...perhaps on a federal or game wildlife management refuge, but I doubt that will happen.

Really, I don't want to see these things. I just want for them to go away and leave us alone. Don't want to see them, don't want to hear them, don't want to know they are here. Just want to get on with my life. Want to finish up my gardening year, decorate and shop for the holidays, live our lives in peace and quiet, etc. I realize that what I want, though, is really irrelevant at this point in time because we're being pushed into a corner by the presence of these animals in our part of the county. I'd like for us all to live and let live, but find it hard to see how that is possible, since they are predators. I don't know the solution. I went out to the garden and picked produce today without a gun or a camera or a phone. It was a defiant and possibly stupid move that could have ended badly, but I am determined that I will not let the presence of these animals dictate how I live my life.

Dawn

Good luck.

$500 until the end of the year for your neighbors!

There is just no way a mountain lion is going to go around killing pets or chickens and not also be killing larger animals. And there is no way that if many of these larger animals are bing killed that the owners will not try to find the animal and stop the killing. And there is no way that if the ranchers look hard after multiple killings that they will not find cougar evidence of the cougar itself.

This goes for anywhere in the state. Cimarron County does have a small cougar population now and this has happened a few times in just the last few years there. Dead livestock will turn into dead cougars and there is no reason to break the law not turn in the cougar body.

If you see this, are your peppers still alive or have y'all had a freeze? Mine are still alive and producing.

Since my two earlier up-close-and-personal cougar sightings this year(one was at the western fenceline of my garden and the other was at the eastern fenceline of my garden about 6-8 weeks later), I am getting used to seeing them, but am not liking it. : (

I believe they are in various places in Oklahoma and just don't believe all the sightings are misidentifications, although I am sure some of them are. Scott and I disagree a lot on this topic, but we respect one another and aren't letting this disagreement get in the way of our friendship. (Hi, Scott.)

I think my earliest cougar experience here goes back to either 1999 or 2000, so this is not, as they say, my first rodeo.

Still, I just wish they'd go away and stop killing the domestic animals. I'm hoping they stick around during deer hunting season and we either get some good photos of them from some hunters, or maybe the hunters might have to shoot the cougars....to protect themselves, of course.

When I moved here, I knew there would be wildlife. I grew up in a town in Texas nicknamed "Panther City" for heaven's sake. Still, I never expected I'd be looking at my garden and have a cougar come strolling into my line of sight. It's enough to make you think twice about casually strolling out to your own garden.

I'm sure we'll survive this round of critter problems, but that doesn't necessarily mean I think the cougars will vanish. There have been a lot of sightings in Carter County too, one county north of us, and particularly along the Carter County/Love County "County Line Rd." area in winter and spring 2009.

There is no doubt in my mind they are here, but Scott requires proof.

Dawn

I saw a trail cam picture of one in the last few weeks. It wasn't reported I understand for some of the reasons Dawn mentioned above. It is like the picture I saw recently that showed the back half with the tail. Their reply was without seeing the whole animal they couldn't verify it. So many in KS I know are done trying to work with the wildlife department. I've been told of cases where scat and dead animals were for proof also and they didn't show up to look before the evidence was gone. Like I've said before I'm convinced along with many I know that they won't admit there is any unless they have no choice. In my opinion both are lions. We have a bobacat about 2 miles from my plant I see sometimes. I can tell you the Difference in tails alone will tell you. Along with the size. And like a rancher who saw one being transported by the wildlife department told me if you've ever saw one you won't mistake it for a bobcat and he has bobcats every year. I will say there are many false claims. That is people who haven't been around wildlife and have no real idea what they are lookijng at. But for those of us who have seen them or have researched them I will say I consider their sightings creditable. I respect your opinions Scott but the reality out here is different than you think in my opinion. Jay

Rickey

My peppers are still hanging in there. I know the time is getting close and they are mostly green still :-(
Still getting a few cherry tomatoes, enough to keep me in fresh salsa!! I picked my bhut jolokia and one devil's tongue last night and tonite I am going to taste test one.

Thanks for the update on the situation there.

I agree that once someone has seen a 'long-tail cat', they'll never mistakenly identify a 'bob-tail cat' as a cougar. The difference in size is amazing, and even young cougars with spots look (to me) significantly different from bobcats. You might remember, though, that the first one I saw this summer was young and still had its baby spots and I described it to Tim and Chris as a big bobcat with a very long tail. Then, I went online and looked at photos of young cougars and knew what I had seen....so at least I learned something from this because I didn't know young cougars had spots since I'd only seen adult ones before that.

Rickey,

You're welcome. I'm glad you saw this thread as I was worried about your dogs--the little dog that disappeared last week was about the same size as your dogs.

Thanks for supporting my comments. It has taken me a few years to understand all the wildlife here (and that includes the people who hunt where they wish and endanger us all), but I think I pretty much understand what we're dealing with here now in terms of wildlife, wild people (LOL) and our unique location in the bend of the river.

River,

Scott knows the law better than I do, but it is my understanding a person in our state may shoot a cougar to protect themselves or any other people with them or to protect their animals. However, by law, you are supposed to notify the wildlife folks within 24 hours.

I thought about doing the camera thing, but would rather spend money on stuff that we need and a trail camera isn't something we need. We don't have to 'prove' what we've seen here, because we know we've seen it and I don't care if anyone else sees it or not. I just want for us and our animals to be safe.

I'm glad the peppers are still going--I think that's remarkable considering how far north you are because I know it has gotten very close to freezing a couple of times.

Watch your tongue tonight with those particular peppers because you are playing with fire!!!

Hi Christy,

It is nice to see another Ozarker visiting our forum! Cool photos although looking at that big cat sent a chill down my spine. Having seen two this summer, I don't think my nerves could handle another encounter.

You do have to watch those teenage boys running around with guns. When the neighbor and I both were narrowly missed by bullets within days of each other, he called the father of the closest teenager (and I didn't even know they had a teenager at that house, but think they had recently taken custody of a grandchild) and told them they needed to control those kids with their guns. Neither he nor I had any more bullet problems that year, and then those people moved away.

It is my understanding that Mountain Lions are more active at night in general. However, every time I have seen one, it has been in broad daylight (and that makes me wonder what I am not seeing at night). The first sighting this past summer was a little after 9 a.m., I think. The second sighting was in late afternoon/early evening but the sun was still pretty high in the sky. Several years ago when we saw two crossing a pasture together, they crossed west to east at mid-morning, and then came back from east to west in mid-afternoon. We were idiots and didn't think of taking a photo---we were just sort of speechless that they were here and out in broad daylight.

The night that one roared/screamed (it sort of starts like a roar, but sounds more like a lady's scream at the end) at me from very close, it was a January night around 9 p.m. and neighbors who lived a mile away thought it might have gotten me! LOL It didn't, but I did back into the house with a great deal of speed.

A cougar that is hunting can cover a huge amount of territory. Where we live, it is mixed pastures and post oak woodlands near the Red River so there's not a lot of caves, except maybe some dug out spots in creek banks. However, about 20 or 25 miles north of us along the Carter County/Love County line, there are some rocky hills with caves and people in that area were reporting sightings of them regularly enough last winter that it made the local news.

The livestock and pets have mostly disappeared in broad daylight because almost everyone here has their animals locked up in barns or coops (or, in the case of dogs and cats, in garages and houses) at night because of the large numbers of predators. If you leave small dogs or cats outside at night around here, they don't live long at all. I am not sure about the goats that disappeared a few weeks ago because I heard of that second hand and didn't speak with their owner. I have noticed that since he lost the goats, the rest of his goats are no longer in the pasture farther from the house--he's moved them up right by the house.

I'd like to emphasize that the behavior we're seeing here with the cougars in broad daylight, and them being visible in our yard in broad daylight is very odd and goes against everything we think we know about cougars.

I'll link a good cougar website below.

Dawn

P.S. Did y'all read the story about the woman in Canada who was attacked and killed by coyotes? It was on Yahoo yesterday and on The Oklahoman's website as well. That is odd and is also not typical coyote behavior. I really feel so sad for her and for her family.

Case in point about your very real concern with hunters in the area and errant bullets, a deer hunter was just shot and killed in Latimer County. This kind of hits home with me because my uncle was a guide in Colorado, near Meeker and was shot in the thigh while on horseback by one of the men he was guiding on the hunt. That horrible episode ended that career for him.

As for me, while working at the ranch, and the sound of gun shots all over the place during deer season, I stayed inside and forgoed walks in the woods, or even down to the garden.

One of the country stores here stupidly advertised 12 packs of "Bud" because it was deer season. Guns and beer do NOT mix, period!

Stay safe,

Barbara

Christie, I think that picture is of a canine, but that is just a guess. Missouri has a dedicated team that aggresively investigates mountain lion sightings so you can send it to them and they may be able to tell you for sure. Regardless, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma probably all have similar numbers of Mountain Lions (excluding Cimmarron County) but each state has different attitudes about them to a certain extent. Oklahoma is the furtherst towards not wanting them around IMO.

It would have to be an enormous conspiracy of regular people, mountain lions, wildlife officials, and media for there to never (one exception) have been a single body of one found in this state in recent history. What are the chances that EVERY SINGLE mountain lion killed or found or photographed clearly here was either not turned in, covered up by officials, not photographed at all, etc. SO MANY people talk about their sightings with excitement, tell LOTS of people about them, the media reports almost all sightings in populated areas, etc., yet never a single piece of evidence EVER.

The two exceptions to this are the really bad night picture from a trail camera last year that experts think was a cougar near Perkins, and the cougar killed by a train a few years ago near Ponca City that lends even more evicence that they are extremely rare in Oklahoma since that ONLY ONE EVER in recent times found here was a collared one that had only been in the state a few weeks traveling from the Black Hills of South Dakota. (What are the chances that the one in the state for only a few weeks is found and reported, but the ones "living here" that are killed or found are not reported?)

The facts are that there are no breeding populations in the main body of Oklahoma, there are a "handful" that move around or into the state at any one time, and almost all sightings (and hearings) are mistakes. Still, some are legit and these legit ones will be increasing. Who knows when we can go from saying there are no breeding population to saying we have a few reproducing so this means you can never say "No" breeding populations I guess, just extremely unlikely.

This is the time of year when most of the young male cougars leave the saturated areas they were born in, plus this is also when there are hundreds of thousands of trail camera pictures taken and hunters in the woods DAILY in Oklahoma, so these two months are our best chance for new confirmations. I expect we will get a couple this fall and early winter since there are so many more nearby than ever before.

The wildlife biologist at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge just told me that their new trail cameras have given him 16,000 pictures of animals this fall on the refuge. He has personally gone through every one of those 16,000 and there has not been a single mountain lion photo. Lots of other cool stuff, though. They even have hogs there now. That stinks. He will keep after it.

I heard about the deer hunter Sunday night and it is a very sad story and I am sure his family and friends are totally devastated and I am sure the gentleman who shot him is totally devastated too. The circumstances in which this tragedy occurred are the same circumstances we encounter here all the time.

According to other media reports, these men were 'hunting' even though neither had a valid hunting license, the victim was not wearing the required hunter orange while hunting, and the shooter was NOT using an allowed weapon--he was using a high-powered gun during muzzle-loader season. So, they broke several laws and, sadly, a tragedy resulted. Also, I am not a hunter but I do know you should never pull a trigger unless you are sure you know what you're shooting. Maybe if they'd been obeying the laws, this tragedy could have been averted and hopefully some other folks will read about this tragedy and be more careful when they are hunting so it does not happen again.

I agree guns and beer do not mix, and would hope the guys save the drinking for night time around the campfire at the deer camp, and that they do not mix the drinking with the shooting. (Scarey thought, isn't it?)

Barbara, I mostly stay inside during deer season, or I wear red or orange. There's just too many trigger-happy idiots running around poaching on private property where they have no right to be. And, to any of you who are serious, law-abiding hunters who follow the rules and regs--I am not talking about you--I'm talking about those other folks.

Scott,

I think the photo is too fuzzy and was taken from too great of a distance to really give an identifiable image. However, since the OP said they sent the photo to their conservation personnel and those folks were excited about it, I assumed that meant the conservation personnel believed it was a big cat. I have my doubts about the pawprint though.

I think it is just a matter of time before someone catches a photo or finds scat or fur or whatever. It seems to me that too many are being seen in too many places for there not to be an eventual photo, and I believe it will come from a trail camera or maybe from a photo taken by a hunter from a deer stand.

I don't know why our state can't just say, "OK, they're here, be careful around them," etc. and just get on with more important business.

Even though y'all might think this comment sounds strange coming from me, it would be a positive thing if they are here. Why? The feral pig population is soaring down here in southern OK (I don't know what it is like elsewhere) and the cougars could help keep that population controlled, and sometimes our deer population gets too high and there isn't enough winter forage for all of them, so some population control there wouldn't hurt. Finally, from an ecological viewpoint, it is a good sign if an animal that was once 'exterminated' from an area is able to make a comeback and repopulate that area. Still, that doesn't mean I want them here in my yard, strolling around my garden, killing my pets and frightening me to death. I want them "out yonder" away from the populated areas.

Dawn

We all know what they say on this page and I believe it has been linked on the 2 or 3 earlier discussions this summer.

We also know that some people get very different resposes from their local wildlife officers (and often from county and city officials as well) that do no support the info on the page you linked. Many people have reported on various blogs, forums and in the comment sections of media websites that their local wildlife officials tell them "we don't have them here in our county" despite numerous sightings, etc. I don't know why it is so hard for them to just say "Well, we might have them here".

It doesn't matter what you see with your own two eyes or how many people see it, if you cannot produce a good-quality photo, scat, verified tracks or fur, they tell you that you undoubtedly saw either a kitty cat, a bobcat, a golden lab, a deer, a coyote, etc. They tell you that you heard a fox or a bobcat or whatever. They continue to insist there is no breeding population here because they haven't verified one, but I know they are breeding here. Because if they are not breeding here, someone needs to explain the two juveniles in my yard this summer and explain how they came to be born.

I know that many sightings are erroneous but that doesn't mean all of them are and most wildlife officials will insist you didn't see what you thought you saw and that they are right and you are wrong. People here say they've always been told we don't have cougars here and they've been treated like they are crazy or stupid, so they don't bother reporting what they see to anyone except perhaps their nearest neighbors.

In recent years, the OK Dept. of Wildlife has had to concede that there are mountain lions here in Oklahoma because a park ranger himself saw two traveling together several years ago and was able to snap a photo of one of them. There also was a radio-collared one struck and killed several years ago but it had migrated from somewhere else--maybe one of the Dakotas? This was very noteworthy at the time because no one believed a cougar would travel that far, and this one did it in a relatively short time period. Since then, the researchers that had collared the one found dead in OK have had some of their other radio-collared cougars showing up a very long distance from the area where they were originally collared. I think they are learning a lot from their research and it appears it may refute the previous belief that cougars don't travel terribly far.

Still, they'll insist most of the ones here are in southwestern OK or the panhandle even though reports come in from all over the state.

For years, the official position has been that there is not a verified breeding population in Oklahoma and that the cougars that are seen are undoubtedly young males that have come here from elsewhere to establish their own territory. Apparently cougars are capable of breeding in other states, but only capable of hunting and traveling in OK.

Regarding the cougars long seen in the westernmost part of the OK Panhandle, they have long said those are crossing over into OK from NM, CO, KS or TX. Why? Why is it impossible to believe or admit that they might be living here and breeding here? How do they know they are crossing over? Are they sitting at the border and watching for the cougars to cross the state line? Oh, don't even get me started.....

I've linked a report from over a decade ago that doesn't document recent sightings, but it is thorough and lists a lot of the confirmed sightings over the decades through the point in time that the report was issued.

In the beginning, I only posted about the cougar sighting because the first cougar sighted was standing outside my garden gate, which certainly changed my gardening habits. It has given us a topic to discuss endlessly (and passionately) the last few months. I just figured if a cougar was lurking right outside my garden fence, then it could happen to one of y'all too, so y'all needed to be aware of it--I never intended to stir up a 'hot topic'. LOL

Dawn

Yes, I'm really going camping in the chilly fall. How the heck else do you really enjoy the full benefit of every season if you don't get out and experience it? LOL I'll report back any and everything I can find!

Paula

Hunters have been killing lions in Colorado progressively in the last two decades towards the end of the mountain range near Black Mesa in the OK panhandle where that ranger photographed the lions. It is only in the last few years that the lions have gotten established that far east and started killing livestock there and ranchers and wildlife people have started killing them as a result. Where those "mountains" end near Black Mesa is where the breeding populations stop and no females have been found away from there or in any other part of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, etc. outside of these home ranges. Everyone has been a male other than ones in the east where DNA has shown that they originated from South America as part of the pet trade. Northwest Nebraska and parts of South Dakota now also are seeing females but this is only in the last few years as the populations in the black Hills of South Dakota are saturated even with females. Extensive research supported by virtually all killings show that females do not move far from their birth area and their home ranges overlap extensively. This is not so for males who get forced out and travel extensively looking for home ranges and mates.

River, there is nothing being admitted on that page other than the standard stuff about how they were here historically and occasionally have been found throughout this last century even though the resident population were wiped out long before that.

Guys, look into every other state east of the Missippi and people are having these same arguments there, even on other Gardenweb forums. They say the exact things people are saying here about their wildlife people and thir own sightings, and yet it is not even possible to get breeding populations there or even individuals there unless someone releases them. That is proven over and over.

A lot of this is just misunderstandings about what is meant by "cougars are here". Wildlife people can't say that because that would mislead people into thinking they have home terrotiries, are reproducing, etc., when the wildlife people, cougar support groups, etc. know this is not the case. They all agree that there are no breeding populations here yet but that males are starting to show up more and more on the plains were they have not been for a century and eventually some females will work out of the rugged areas west of here and move in. It just hasn't happened yet and every piece of evidence and even the cougar organizations agree with this. If you look at Cougarnet for example you see that everything that is happening is recent, and those guys want to find them more than anyone.

Why can ranchers and others kill multiple ones in the end of the panhandle along the Colorado border because of cougars taking livestock there, yet NEVER another one anywhere else if they live and breed all over the state? Are wildlife people covering up all the killings with the help of the other ranchers? Come on.

Why are trail cameras in the Florida swamps (or even in NW Nebraska these days) catching many images on a regular basis, plus losing 20% of their cats each year to roadkill, and yet NEVER a picture made public or roadkill found here if we have breeding populations?

Why NEVER a single piece of evidence, even from the one(s) living near dawn (nothing personal) for the last ten years (which would require quite a few cats), in the entire state, yet there is abundant evidence such as their obvious kills, prints, pictures taken, etc., all over southern Florida, South Dakota, etc. where there are breeding populations.

Because the truth is that we have almost none here (yet)and no breeding populations at all outside of the mountains along the Colorado border.

Dawn (love you, BTW), how can you explain how you have seen black ones in the past as have many people around you who also have seen black ones, when there has never existed a black moutain lion or any similar looking or sized dark animal in this part of the world? AND YET you would have us believe that the yellow colored ones you guys have seen ARE real when there are MANY other similar colored and sized animals native to Love County, The answer is either you have some released cougars from the pet trade there or most of your sightings are false. The obvious exception is the one you saw very close up and maybe a few others that were the same lone male, even though you are starting to worry me about even those! Prove me wrong you guys. Look into cougar signs, etc. and find some evidence.

~sigh~

Now for the disclaimer: Dawn lives in a location that would be much more likely than most of us to have a cougar come through since they mostly follow river corridors when tney disperse. Plus there have been females in recent history migrate north and east from the cougar populations in the Big Bend area and far south Texas. A Texas wildlife Dept site shows these finds by the way, but nothing in the areas immediate to Dawn. There is always the chance (like Dawn winning the loto) that a female did make it that far and find a male (like the male winning the loto), and did reproduce and this female or young has survived these last ten or so years. It IS possible, and it would be the biggest wildlife news on the plains in the last 50 years if true. Certainly the possibility of that being true is worth putting forth effort to find evidence of it, evidence that would not be difficult to find if people look seriously.

As Dawn said, we actually are friends and these discussions, although serious and especially a serious subject to Dawn since she is having to live with this on her mind all the time, are not personal at all; and from my side I am going overboard to present the other side of the issue since it is hard to get people to come out and go against the popular opinion on this topic. Anyone who has been on the board any length of time knows Dawn is one of the (if not THE) most knowledgable (sp?) and experienced people on this board, not to mention the nicest and most helpful.

Keep your camera on you at all times! LOL

by the way, how can a person mistake a cougar for a bobcat? the size and color are so different.Scott, next you will be saying that these people are seeing feral cats.

http://www.thejump.net/blog/index.php?/archives/16-TWO-MOUNTAIN-LIONS-CONFIRMED-IN-WESTERN-OKLAHOMA.html

"people can say what they want but there are black panthers between bristow and mannford oklahoma on hwy 48 and hwy 33, too many people have seen them and say they have been there for years , i have seen them my self, i have also spotted the tracks in my yard on the cimmarron river ,the first time i saw them was 3 years ago, i used to go fishing at night but not any more , these are scary animals, very pretty but very scary and very large, bigger than rottweillers, anyone that thinks they dont exist needs to go there , they will come about 50 feet from the hwy , (hwy 48 about 1/4 mile south of hwy 33)
#1.4 David on 2008-09-08 15:01"

http://blog.newsok.com/outdoors/2009/08/12/answering-some-emails-about-alligators-mountain-lions-and-bears/

"I have done some research on this area, and I have found that Oklahoma was once home to the jaguar and the panther in the mid-to-late 19th century. They became extinct to this area ONLY due to over-hunting for their hides and sport hunting. It has been nearly 150 years since then, so the likelyhood that a few have migrated back is not out of the question. Even according to Prof. Jenks of South Dakota(Leading reseacher in Mountian Lions) has found that mountian lions have traveled(over 600 miles) from the Black Hills to Oklahoma, so the why not the other way around?"

I agree it's hard to tell anything from the photo at the link I posted.

Be sure buy a lotto ticket tonight.

Really? You can take exception to my use of the term "has to concede" but I stand by it. I think the wildlife folks are so used to denying that the cougars are here that it probably was hard for them to say "oh, they're here and we have a photo to prove it and our employee took the photo". That's my opinion and I am entitled to it just as you are entitled to yours. This is another area where you and I just have to agree to disagree.

If there are no breeding populations here, kindly explain the appearance of two different juveniles on our land this summer. Was it an immaculate conception? I believe what I see with my own two eyes and I have seen two juveniles. Do I know how they came to be here? No, of course not, but I know they had a mother and a father and they were conceived and born someplace. So, no one can convince me there is not a breeding population in our state until they can explain where the juveniles seen this summer came from.

I don't want to argue about the black cats either. We had one here walking up our driveway several years ago. It was NOT a black lab or any other dog, because it snarled and hissed like a cat. Once again, I have no idea where it came from or why it was here or where it went, but on that particular night it was here. We believe what our eyes see firsthand no matter what anyone else says. And, remember, the thought was that it was a black lab until it turned around, looked at our son, and hissed and snarled. Sometimes things happen that we cannot explain, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. I swear, we are as puzzled by this as everyone else, but whatever it was, it was here.

It actually was people in Gainesville who kept telling me they had black panthers there on remote, riverside property similar to ours (or even more remote than ours) and they told me that for years and years. They also claimed they've seen them around "forever" and saw them more often than they saw cougars. So, I asked a few people on this side of the river what they thought about that, and every one of them said I was the crazy person if I did not believe they were here because they've been seen for decades in areas along the river. I didn't really think alligators were found here either, until one popped up in a remote stock tank on a ranch near us (it adjoins the river) after we had bought this property but before we'd built the house and moved here. So, I just think odd things happen sometimes and animals pop up where they are not expected and cannot be explained logically.

Scott, I don't have to prove you wrong--that's not my job and that's not what this is about and it is not what I am interested in. I am just trying to understand why they are here and so visible this year, why they are killing our pets and poultry and trying to figure out what we can do here on our own piece of property to keep our animals safe. I don't care about what is seen or photographed or whatever--I care about our safety here. My only agenda is to keep us safe and to make our neighbors aware of what we're seeing (and what some of them are seeing as well) so that all of us here can keep ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and our animals safe.

I'm not a biologist or a wildlife conservation officer and I cannot explain the reasons behind what we are seeing here but I do know what we are seeing. After the initial sighting in.....um, I think it was late June or early July....I carried a camera with me every time I left the house, even if it was just to walk to the mailbox. After a couple of months of lugging around the camera and seeing nothing, I assumed that "it" was gone and quit worrying about it because I figured "it" was gone. At that point in time, I truly believed the sighting of a cougar in our yard was a "one-time occurrence" and that, even if I lived to be 90 years old, it was likely I'd never see another one in our yard again. Of course, I was wrong about that.

When the second sighting occurred at such close range, I wished I had a camera with me, but of course I didn't. And, to tell you the truth, when you are looking into the eyes of a cougar that is just a few yards from you, your first thought is not "Oh, I need to get a photo to show Scott"--no, it is not! Your first thought is "I need to get out of here now or this thing may kill me". Until that second sighting, I felt like the first sighting was an anomaly, although it did explain why dozens of our chickens and guineas (and our one neighbor's chickens and our other neighbor's guineas) had disappeared....and the dogs and cats as well. Even after the second sighting, I figured there had to be a logical explanation that did not include a breeding population--like maybe a captive cougar gave birth and the owners of that exotic pet released the kittens because they knew they couldn't feed and cage that many.

As other sightings occurred in our end of the county, including Rickey's, I became more convinced they must be breeding here....just too many sightings by too many people and even if some are misidentifications, they all are not. Rickey, for example, went to a great deal of trouble to find sound files on the internet and to listen to them to compare them to what he heard outside his house that night.....so he could be sure he was correctly identifying what he (and his neighbors!) heard. He didn't just hear a loud roar/scream and assume it was a cougar. When Rickey saw the cougar alongside the highway, he turned around and went back to get another look at it, but it was gone. I'm sure he'd like to have proof of that sighting too, but you cannot drive along in the dark with a cell phone camera in one hand "just in case" and the other hand on the steering wheel.

Paula, Have fun and please take a photo for Scott! LOL

I have out-of-state company arriving that weekend and I hope we have some pretty foliage here at our house at that time.

Jessaka, People do sometimes mistake house cats and bobcats and coyotes and some dogs for mountain lions. It happens here and it happens in north Texas. People will show you a cell phone photo and say "look at this cougar" and it will NOT be a cougar. LOL I will say that it seems to be city folks (sorry, I apologize to all you city folks for saying that) who've never lived in the rural areas and who lack experience with wildlife that tend to misidentify. Scott has seen the same types of misidentification too, I think, and you can see some of them on the internet.

Also, all of us here this summer learned about the colors/markings on "atypical" bobcats, which also often have longer tails. I do think that some atypical bobcats might be misidentified as young cougars, although they still are so very small that it is hard for me to imagine it. Everyone in my family saw the atypical bobcat trapped on the neighbor's property this year, and since then we've seen 2 bobcats on our property, but they were the regular ones, not the atypical ones and were far too small to be mistaken for anything except a bobcat. Our son did see a very large typical bobcat crossing Hwy. 77 near our house (Rickey, it was at the Bomar S-curve) shortly after the atypical one was traped. After we saw the trapped atypical bobcat, I knew that the odd black tail I saw moving through tall pasture grass near my compost pile several weeks before likely belonged to an atypical bobcat like the one in the trap. It was a relief to have a reasonable explanation for the sighting of the odd tail.

Christie, Whenever I think about your part of the country, I think about the young woman killed in Arkansas a few years ago....because if it happened to her, it can happen to someone else. So, they say your state's cougars are traveling males too? (sigh) I still think they are here and live among us and are not just traveling through.

I heard the mating scream of the female cougars for three years in a row, and I believe it was 1999, 2000 and 2001, although it could have veen 2000, 2001 and 2002. I heard it often while working in the very secluded woodland at the back of our property, which put me very close to the Red River. If we don't have a breeding population here along the river (which is where I believe they mostly stay), then why was I hearing those sounds?

Rickey, Maybe I should buy a lotto ticket, but I am very frugal and hate to throw money away on gambling. LOL Furthermore, I think I used up all my 'good luck' this year just getting away from the second cougar without being attacked.

Y'all, I wish I had photos or other proof to convince Scott, but I don't. And I'm sure he'd be happier if I was not so adamant that we have seen what we have seen. I do want to emphasize that Scott and I remain friends and do not let our differing points of view affect the friendship we have. And, I want to emphasize that Scott's points are valid---as many sightings as there are, somebody, somewhere has got to come up with some evidence, and I think someone will one of these days. I do think evidence is elusive because that is the nature of the big cats---they disappear the second they realize they've been seen, and they are very fast. With the exception of raccoons and armadilloes, most of the wild animals I see on our property take off and disappear the instant they know they have been seen because they do not want to be seen. The raccoons are a little more hardheaded--if they are finding something in our yard or garden to eat, they won't run from me, but they'll run from my coon-killing dog, Sam. The armadilloes are just goofy. They must be nearsighted because they don't see us until we are almost standing on top of them.

This is the bottom line---as interesting as this topic is to debate, people like Rickey, all the neighbors who live between his house and ours, and all the neighbors who live north of us on our road who have lost animals to cougars this year have to approach this as a safety issue. For us, awareness of the sightings reminds us to be very careful, especially when outside at night. Awareness reminds us to keep our pets and poultry and other livestock safe. Awareness reminds us not to let small children out of our sight outdoors for one second. So, awareness is good because it makes us be more cautious. At this point, we cannot explain the reasons behind all the sightings, but we can take steps to remain as safe as possible. Unfortunately, for me, that means staying away from the garden quite a bit and I truly hate it....but I do not want to have a third sighting of a cougar walking along the garden fenceline....the first was odd, the second was creepy and scarey, and I am afraid a third one might send me over the edge. If I hadn't spent the last 10 years building and enriching the garden soil, I'd move my veggie garden to a new location much closer to the house because the cougar sightings have severely affected my ability to enjoy the garden. (sigh) The thought of starting the garden over in a new spot and spending another 10 years enriching the clay all over again to turn it into great soil just makes me depressed. I think it goes without saying that I'd be much happier if all of this had never occurred.

Dawn

cougar killings. read at your own risk.

hard to believe that people can mistake a cougar for a bobcat or a feral cat. i grew up in a vert small town and used to go hiking and actually found a bobcat skull and cleaned it up. kept it for years but was told that i was weird so gave it to my niece when i grew up. also did same to a coyote skull.

i remember in college going to yosemite and walking up to a coyote and taking its photo but the professor didn't want to believe that i took it close range. so photos of animals are not always believed. also sat down in snow in yosemite and waited for deer to come up to me and took their photo.

i stay away from coyotes now after hearing about a few attacking a woman when she left her car and walked into the woods to use the bathroom. a passerby saved her. http://tchester.org/sgm/lists/coyote_attacks.html
the more these animals become comforable around us the more likely they are to attack. http://tchester.org/sgm/lists/coyote_attacks.html

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/18487649/detail.html

http://digg.com/world_news/Woman_Attacked_By_Coyotes_In_N_S_Park_Dies

http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/taylor-mitchell-19-year-old-woman-attacked-killed-2-coyotes-2503835.html

just google coyote attacks or cougar attacks and you find a lot to read.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I heard that people were raising them and releasing them on purpose for sport which is what was done with feral pigs. Some people can be very stupid and irresponsible. There was tiger found at a puppy mill raid in Missouri earlier this year. It was a female but they didn't say whether they thought it had been used for breeding purposes.

Bass Pro has quite a few game cameras but I think you would have to spend hundreds of dollars and get one of the good ones to catch a fast moving animal at night on film. I used to have a game camera that I bought at Walmart and sometimes I'd only get the back half of a critter in my photos because the camera made a noise an instant before it actually took the picture. That was several years ago though. I'm sure they've improved since then. I threw out a big pile of scraps as bait and aimed the camera so that anything that checked it out would be on film. I only got pictures of skunks, possums, house cats, and rabbits. Cougars have such a huge range, I think it would be very difficult to get a picture of one even with bait.

Maybe someone has a game camera you could borrow Dawn. Have you thought about asking your neighbors if they would chip in to buy a good one? They're losing animals so they might be very happy to find out what's doing it.

I heard them for 3 years or maybe 4 before we actually had two of the put in an appearance walking through the pastures on two ranches north of us. Then, one roared at me in the darkness a few months later. Then, nothing at all for several years, and then the sightings in our yard and elsewhere this year, and all the disappearing animals. I have to tell you that after hearing them off at the river for years and not seeing them, I felt like they would "never" come up here around our homes, but I was wrong. Still, to be seen as often as they have been this year here, and to be as close to houses as they've been (60 to 80' from our house) is extremely odd and has left some of us wondering what in the world is going on here, and we have speculated they might have been someone's pets, or the offspring of someone's pets.

I have had at least one person here tell me he released feral pigs for hunting, and I know it is true because those two pigs stayed on our property (the back part we seldom go to because of all the venomous snakes) for about 3 months. I was SO mad. He did it right before we moved here and said he wouldn't do it again, but we have feral pigs all over anyway. We also had trouble with him poaching on our property in the early years.

Rickey has a game camera just a little bit down the road south from me, and the nearest neighbor to our north has one too. So far, they haven't recorded any cougars, as far as I know.

Dawn

My email in-box is empty, so your e-mail didn't go through. Can you try sending it again? (Sometimes Garden Web e-mail doesn't work.)

I hope you are not about to tell me something that will scare me. LOL I have company coming tomorrow and I don't want to have to walk around the yard with a gun.

Dawn

That is my correct address but I just checked my Yahoo Inbox and it is still empty. I guess the message you sent me is floating around out there in cyberspace.

Dawn

I received your e-mail a few minutes ago and sent you a reply.

Y'all be careful, OK? (Now, everyone will wonder why I said that, but you and I know we always have to be careful stepping outdoors here!)

After hearing the hunters' gunshots all day yesterday and today (and I heard a lot in the middle of the night after midnight, so maybe they were hunting with Night Vision Goggles, LOL), I'm thinking our deer population here is probably dropping by the day.

Dawn

Welcome back! I've missed you so much but know you must have been having a very busy year working on your mom's house and all that stuff that you were doing when we last spoke here online.

I hope your mom is well, and the rest of your family is too.

Those very large bobcats most likely are just very large bobcats--our son has seen a very large one in recent weeks, but also could be a juvenile cougar with spots, so y'all be careful around them.

Merry Heart, I have seen that website before. I think it was linked on either the first or second sighting thread, but it always is good to post it again for folks who haven't seen it yet.

It was a rough weather year. I hope y'all got to get the RV out and travel some.

Gorgeous day today and I've been out enjoying it. I bet you were too.

Talk to you later and keep us posted on all your adventures.

Dawn

Anyway, I didn't sign on here for the first time in months to debate whether or not there are cougars in OK. I just wanted to post a link to the game camera I bought for my DH this summer. I only paid $87 for it, although it's higher priced now, but I have seen this camera for as inexpensive as $75 on eBay and Academy Sports. This has been a reliable camera for us. We have ours set up in our front yard and have gotten many cool pictures of assorted wildlife, including deer and coyotes. The camera is well worth the money to us, just to see what animals visit our yard in the darkness of night. I can assure you if I thought I had a cougar in my yard or on my land, I would invest in a $75- $100 game camera, if for nothing else but to PROVE it exists.

Then the last day of February this year my mom fell and broke her hip. At 92 I was really worried about the outcome of this. She did amazingly well. But caught a nasty bug in the 2 weeks of nursing home physical therapy and was in hospital again for a while. Then went home but was not over it good and it came back so back into hospital again. Highly contageous nasty bug which goes around in hospitals and nursing homes! Grrrrr!
Well thanks to God she healed and finally got back to her apartment and with the help of home health is back to living independantly again!!! She finally got on her feet again sometime in June. She will be 93 in December!

Then we were so behind around home due to me spending so much time with mom....so had to play catch-up for a while. By then it was hotter than hades and not fun to do outside work as you know. We had to take out all those red-tipped photinias you all warned me about....haha. All 9 of them! And with them all the large rock we had put down under them only last year. We put down sod and got that all taken care of finally.

Finally found a chance to get off on a trip with the RV in August and went to Arkansas,enjoyed that very much.
And we stayed at the lake from August 23-October 5. Then the bad weather of October drove us home.

It has certainly been nice weather lately though hasn't it? LOVE IT!

So you can see we have been busy. And add to that my own back problems....ugh. I am seeing a neurosurgeon next month in Oklahoma City. I hope he can read an MRI and find my problem...the docs around Ardmore certainly cannot.

At least I have not seen cougars lurking in my yard! Or heard their screams in the night. I would want to leave home if that happened. Those bobcats at the lake are bad enough for me. I didn't see any this year or hear of anyone seeing them so that was nice.

I can tell you that a couple to around 3 years ago Lone Grove was having problems with cougars. It was on the local news on KTEN a number of times that year. Did you ever see those broadcasts? Someone actually had a slightly murky video of one stalking through trees but it was clear enough to see plainly that is was indeed a mountain lion!!!!!!! So for all of you sceptics...perhaps you should try to search those footages of KTEN's archives.

Dawn what do you think of a donkey? I would sure want some kind of protection. I have heard from many old folks that they are fighting critters and do make pretty good "body guards". Grasping at straws here I know.

I so empathise with your situation and hate it so badly for you. I can only imagine how frightened I would be in your shoes!
I have always loved the old Wilderness Family movies but certainly have no desire at all to have to live it. I can just imagine feeling uncomfortable walking around on your own land for fear of some wild animal coming after you. Oh my!

I do pray that SOMEONE sees the thing good enough at the right time to get proof of what is actually being sighted and get the thing taken care of. Dead or removed to distant places...like Canada!

Guess this post is way past being too long so will stop. Just know my thoughts and prayers are with you on this cougar nightmare.

G.M.

Wow! The house sold really fast!

I am glad to hear your mom overcame her health challenges and is looking forward to celebrating her 93rd birthday soon. That is just terrific!

It is good y'all were able to squeeze in a little RV time. The weather certainly wasn't very good for camping in Sept.-Oct. but it is making up for it now. I am just loving the recent weather and hope it lasts awhile.

I hope the docs in Ok City can help you with your back. No disrespect intended towards the doctors in Ardmore, but whenever any one here in Marietta has anything serious they head for OK City or Dallas-Fort Worth, and I think that is smart.

Everyone keeps suggesting guardian dogs or donkeys, but honestly we have all the pets we need (more than we need actually). Trying to keep all our dogs, cats and poultry fed is like feeding a second family, and my rule around here is that we do not need 1 more animal that needs to be fed and taken care of because I'm stretched too thin as it is. Some neighbors of ours had a donkey for several years and it was VERY loud and VERY annoying and I made a mental note to myself that we didn't need one of those! Then another neighbor (but one that is much farther away) moved into the neighborhood and he's had a hard time keeping his donkey in the pasture. It apparently is a great escape artist. I noticed he's putting up a new fence to replace the old one that had seen better days, so maybe his donkey will stay in the pasture and out of the roads.

I am hoping that the deluge of hunters that arrive during deer season will scare off the evil beasties lurking around here. With the trees/undergrowth bare of foliage in winter, we should be able to get a clean shot at anything lurking around trying to kill our dogs, cats or birds.

I usually watch KXII so I didn't see the KTEN footage, but believe me, having seen them live and in person, I don't even want to look at footage of them. Just looking at a photo of a cougar makes my heart race....I assume that is a reaction to this summer's scares.

I've heard a couple more reports of mountain lions being observed in Love County pursuing deer. At least they seem to be focused on their 'usual' food instead of our cats, dogs and chickens (who no longer free range and are cranky because of it).

It is so good to have you back, G.M.!

Dawn

Yes Dawn I thought of you a LOT while I was off the forum. I was wondering how your gardening was going since no one around this area was doing well. I would go downtown to the farmer market on Saturday morning to find nothing but a few squash, potatoes and such. No Tomatoes! Few cantaloupe! It was pathetic. They all said the weather was doing them in this year.
Finally I found a produce stand near Henry Roberts Express Pharmacy which kept me supplied with wonderful fresh tomatoes and cantaloupe. It was an older guy, in his 80s who grew it all! So that was a blessing. And he sure knew something which no one else around seemed to know! WOW!
I had only planted 3 tomato plants and a few bell peppers but the tomatoes was a total failure. But the peppers are actually still bearing even now. I need to pick them.
I allowed marigolds to take over the raised beds since I had nothing else doing anything so at least I had something there and I still have them. They need to be pulled up...haha. But they are still blooming like crazy.

Dawn I totally believe that you guys may indeed have been visited by mountain lions. But they do travel for long distances and I am praying for your sake that they were only passing through in search of a new home. I just hope and pray it is not around Elephant Rock at the lake!!!

I do know that one day in broad daylight (around 11 in the morning)my friend was visiting me. We were at Elephant Rock. She was facing me and facing the road and my back was to her and we were talking. Suddenly she turned slightly pale and her eyes went very wide and she was stuttering. I couldn't understand what she was saying but she finally said...."What did I just see?" and pointed to the road. I ran to the road and a deer almost ran right up to me and then turned and ran along the road and then back toward me and was acting very strange making a strange blowing, whistling sound. It was very agitated, running back and forth. It finally found it's way back into the undergrowth in the opposite direction to whatever it was Kay had seen.

Finally Kay told me she had seen a large gold colored animal with a long tail. She emphasized long tail and goldish colored. She said it was the size of a large boxer dog or larger. This animal was chasing the deer we decided. She just had a glimpse of this animal but she was acting upset for the rest of the day and just kept talking about it for several days.
Of course we all kidded her and she finally tried to stop talking about it...but for a long time she would talk about it and struggle to come to terms with just what it was she did see.
During that same camping trip My DH saw something large and gold colored run right through the edges our camp area on two separate mornings as he was leaving for town. Both times he came back and told me not to take our tiny poodle outside with me. He was unsure of what he saw, he said he thought it was a cat but it was too large.

We have totally stopped ever camping in that camp spot since that time. We had strange sounds under our RV one night during that time and one night sounds on top of our trailer like something large walking on it! My DH went out to see what it was but he didn't see anything. I am GLAD!

I have seen from a distance of perhaps a quarter mile in pre-dawn hours on at least 2 occasions something too large to be a bobcat crossing the road further down from that same area and in another year later from the previous experiences. It was too far and too dark still for me to see color but it was as Kay said....at least the size of a large boxer dog or larger. I think larger..and was definitely a cat from it's walk and shape.
I am not the only one who has seen it. Others have told of seeing cats which are too large to be bobcats. Always in late evening or predawn without enough light to be sure what they were seeing. One lady even talked of seeing a huge BLACK cat like panther cross the road but she walked very early and I think she was seeing the same thing but the lack of light makes the animal look black. But thankfully no one has had bad encounters other than their dogs suddenly going nuts wanting to take off through the woods or acting spooked and almost having to carried.

I hope they left. There are plenty of other areas on the lake with rocky cliffs and are just perfect for cougars to den up. Oh my CHILLS down my spine! But all of Lake Murray is of course rocky and any place in the heavily timbered areas may have good places for that kind of animal.

My daddy always told me to be careful out there as he worked on the lake during CCC's and he has seen plenty. He always said there were lynx on the lake...that is what he called them. I certainly know the terrain seems perfect for them to want to live there.

Which brings me to say this....are there areas down near where you all live with that type of terrain? It all seems so flat from what I have seen. I have no idea what it is like off the highway very far.

Well enough of this for now. I have a busy day ahead with lots of appointments and it is time to get dressed and going.
Have a blessed day!
G.M.

I'm glad you found the Farmer's Market guy with all the good stuff. In our garden we've had, and are still having, an amazing year. I have filled up three freezers with produce and canned over 300 jars of stuff. It is been ridiculous, but I am not complaining. : ) I have, actually, had my fill of tomatoes (can you believe it?) so most of the ones I'm picking now are going into the freezer for winter cooking.

We are in an area with a huge amount of wild terrain. It is an area of mixed pastures and post oak-hickory woodlands. The deer population is huge here because of our proximity to the river. It is not unusual to have 7-9 deer together on our property at one time.

The terrain here varies....some folks have a lot of rocky areas, while others like us are in low-lying hollows with steep creek banks. Some animals do dig burrows into those creek banks.

The river lies a mile or so to our west, about 8 miles to our south, and 2 or so miles to our east, and some of that land is wildlife management land with what seems to be a pretty high wildlife population. Because the river and its adjacent untamed areas lie on three sides of us, we have oodles of wildlife of all types. You cannot leave animals of any size outside, except for the largest dogs, overnight or they won't live very long. All our poulty is now penned up 24/7 because we lost 33 chickens and guineas this year when they were allowed to free-range. All our cats and dogs are secured inside the barn or house before dark every evening and I don't let them out until at least an hour after sunrise. Many folks on our road have lost small dogs and cats and poultry this year, and often it has been a small dog that lives inside and disappeared when it went outside briefly to use the bathroom. The predators keep returning over and over to the same places and taking more small dogs, cats and poulty.

The old rancher guys here have told me many tales of their encounters with long-tailed cats, as many of them refer to the cougars, and to coyotes, foxes and bobcats. A couple of them believe they have seen lynx (with full-length tails) over the years, but I suspect those are juvenile cougars because the juveniles are spotted. We might lose a chicken or two in an average year, so clearly this is not an average year.

Back in the springtime, KXII had a story about numerous cougar sightings between Oswalt Road and County Line Road, especially around the rock quarry where there's those rocky hills and some caves. They quoted some Carter County law enforcement officers who said the cat sightings have been high this year and they believe them to be valid. A lot of pets have also gone missing in those areas.It seems like the Ardmoreite might have mentioned those news reports too.

In recent weeks, a couple of people here have mentioned seeing cougars chasing deer across pastures or fields. One such sighting was very close to our home and hearing about it made me feel a bit anxious for the well-being of the people and pets who live on and adjacent to that piece of property.

We have had a predator on our property the last couple of days/nights. You know when something is around because the cats sit up on the roof of the house (quite a goofy sight) and won't come down, or they spend the day on the porch or in the house and won't roam around the yard. It amazes me how smart the cats are (which probably explains why they are still alive). When they know something is out there, they are very cautious and even get anxious if I venture too far from the house.

We keep a gun handy downstairs 24/7 so we can grab it quickly as needed, unless a child is in our home, and then it goes back into the gun safe.

It has been quite a year here....I'm looking forward to a fresh start in 2010, but I doubt we'll ever let our poultry free-range again because losing them hurts too much. I just love all our little fluffy feathered hens, and I don't mind the roosters as long as they aren't trying to kill me. When an aggressive rooster is trying to spur me when I'm in the enclosed/roofed chicken run or in the chicken coop, I threaten to turn it loose to roam and let it be 'cougar bait'. That threat does not deter the rooster of course, but I carry a wooden tomato stake and swing it at the aggressive rooster and that will send him running.

Dawn

I did not know about the KXII news of cougar sightings near Oswalt Road and so on. But I did run across info on my computer where I mentioned the news on KTEN to a friend I write to daily. I was looking up a particular photo I had sent to her and stumbled across the info. It was July 28, 2006. So all the stuff with cougars is not new news really.

Let's just pray they keep going and don't decide they like it here. Most likely there are plenty of places here they will like. Oklahoma has such varied terrain in different areas it is amazing.

We just had to go to Olney, Texas to a good friend's funeral on Saturday. I just hate traveling west from Ardmore. Such desert looking country not far west of here at all. And it just keeps going and going. Give me the green rolling hills and trees....haha. The only place I want to be where it is all prickly pear and Mesquite trees is near the Gulf close to the water...haha.

Do you feel that the deer population is increasing around your area? Do you all often see them near the roads?

They seem worse than ever around here. A very good friend is in OU Medical Center Trauma Center and has been for the last 3 weeks from hitting a deer while he was riding on the lake road on his large 3 wheel Honda Gold Wing cycle.
Please remember him in your prayers. His name is Jim. He is in very bad shape. Had been on a ventilator for all this time! Only finally on Monday for the first time since his accident did he open his eyes and focus on his wife and she believed he recognized her. He has been in a coma all this time. He is continuing to have surgeries to try to repair damage to his body. He had all kinds of internal and external injuries. Poor guy!

And recently a young lady was killed on highway 77 between here and Springer due to hitting a deer on the road.

I see deer all the time near the streets and roads and sometimes in heavily populated areas. And my sisters who both live east of town see them almost daily near the roads. I know what is like to be in a car when it hits a deer. I have experienced this two different times. Fortunately no one was injured either time but the last time our car was totaled.

I love to see and watch the deer but I am hoping for a really good hunting season to downsize their population a little. Of course so many areas don't allow hunting so they will likely just go there. haha.

Back to gardening.....Dawn I can hardly believe what a great year you have had for harvesting! I have to tell you that experienced gardeners in our area were having a very bad year this year with little yield. One lady owns a large truck farm near Mannsville. I have bought all kinds of fresh produce from her for years and she just didn't have it this year. Finally she had pumpkins...haha. No tomatoes to speak of or melons either. Perhaps she finally had watermelons, I don't know, as by then I had found the other produce stand and had given up on the downtown market.

Gee this is not a very interesting post. Guess my mind is just all over the place this morning.

I need to go and finish up a little craft project I have been working on. So will stop for now.

Just stay safe and have a great day.

Oh before I forget.....did I read in some of your posts that you have a grand baby now? Tell me about that.

G.M.

I am sorry to hear about the passing of your friend in Olney....and that is a hot, dry, miserable area, isn't it? I've noticed that anything west of I-35 in Carter and Love Counties gets pretty dry looking pretty fast, and the further west you go, the worse it gets. I will pray for your friend Jim and hope he survives and is able to make a complete recovery. I was shocked by the death of the young lady who hit the deer. Did you know that she had recently joined one of Love County's volunteer fire departments out there near the lake---I think it was the East Side Fire Dept. and she had been to her first house fire earlier in the day on that Sunday that she struck the deer and died. It was a pretty big house fire in Marietta and they'd paged out 6 fire depts. Then, we heard that night or the next day about a young woman who'd hit a deer and died, but didn't realize until the next day that it was one of our county's young volunteer firefighters. What a terrible tragedy and such a huge loss for all who knew her and loved her.

It seems like our deer population has been up for at least the last three years. Prior to that it seemed to cycle up and down more, but lately it seems to keep going up and not down. In a down year, I'll only see them in winter and early spring when they are really hungry, but in an up year, I'll see them almost every day of the year...so they have been my nearly constant companions these last three years. I noticed our next door neighbor has allowed someone to put up a deer stand on his property and that's the first time that's happened since we moved here.

I see the deer on the roads all the time and it seems like we're having more deer-involved accidents the last 2 or 3 years here in Love County. It is amazing how much damage a deer can do to a car, and to the people in the car.

Merry Heart, it was a bizarre gardening year. I had a lot of tomatoes and other veggies in the ground and growing well and then that 12.6" or 12.8" of rain fell in one day in late April, and I thought I'd lose everything. It didn't help that we had 8 or 9 more inches of rain in May. Even though the tomato plants stalled and didn't grow one bit for almost six weeks, they mostly survived. I did lose most of my onions, and my poor potatoes, which had already frozen twice and regrown both times mostly died in the waterlogged soil and I had to replant in May, which is much too late. By the time the ground dried out enough to plant, it was too late and too hot for some things like green beans, so I didn't plant them until fall.

I worried endlessly that I'd planted my broccoli too late, but since May and early June didn't heat up as much as usual, we had probably our best broccoli crop ever.

Most of the garden overcame the weather challenges, but a lot of stuff produced late. The okra and black-eyed peas produced early, though, perhaps because the recurring cold fronts/rain made them happier than usual. By late July, I was harvesting and putting up food like a mad woman. I've never had as many peppers as we had this year and, while the tomato crop wasn't the heaviest I've ever had, it was quite abundant. I made dozens of jars of salsa and also of tomato sauce and froze tons of peppers and tomatoes as well.

My summer cukes didn't produce that well--I think it was actually too wet for them, but the fall cukes have produced very well and are still producing even now. We had all the zucchini and squash we wanted and quite a few melons as well, although I thought the excess moisture watered down their flavor a bit. The onion crop was poor, but I just recently used the last of this year's crop of fresh onions, so they lasted a prety long time. After worrying and fretting that I wouldn't have enough cukes to make pickles, I ended up with 6 or 8 kinds of pickles and relishes, so I'm a happy camper.

In the freezer, I have oodles of black-eyed peas, sweet corn, broccoli, sweet pepers, hot peppers, chopped onions and sliced onions (from 2008's bumper crop),okra, green beans, squash, stewed tomatoes, pureed tomatoes, squash and thousands of tiny, dehydrated, bite-sized tomatoes. It's funny how a garden year that seemed like it would be a dud ended up working out OK in the end.

I think there's a couple of reasons that we had success with our garden here this year when many others in southern Oklahoma didn't. First, the raised beds deserve a lot of the credit because they helped the plants survive the sometimes torrential downpours. Secondly, even worse than the perpetually wet soil for many people here was the huge onslaught of weeds. I think that by mulching heavily, and by religiously pulling any weeds that did sprout, I was able to overcome the weed issue and that allowed the garden to thrive. A lot of folks just abandoned their gardens here when the weeds growing in the wet soil got head high. I have to admit, though, that I haven't done a very good job of keeping the fall weeds out of the pathways, but I figure they'll freeze soon and then I'll yank them out and throw them on the compost pile. Third, I tried to be persistent. If something wasn't doing well because of the rain, I just pulled it up and planted a succession crop after a few dry days. Fourth, I really stayed on top of picking because some things, like black-eyed peas, cukes and okra, slow down production if you let the crops on the vine stay too long and get too big. I think that helped a lot. Finally, I spent a lot of money watering during the hotter spells here when the rain stopped. It truly is amazing how a garden can go from too wet to way too dry in just a few days. I did have a big water bill in July and August when the rain was more scarce here, but watering kept everything alive and producing until cooler weather and more rain returned in August. In a drought year, I can't even afford to water enough to keep the garden going through the dry spells, but this year I was able to. The fall garden has been perhaps the best fall garden ever. It may have been slow to produce during the colder, rainier parts of October, but it is producing like mad right now and has made up for October. Not having a hard freeze here yet has helped a lot too. Oh, and I did have to fight the raccoons for the corn, but the taller 7' high garden fence kept the deer out of the garden at least. And, after Sam (one of our dogs) caught and killed a raccoon just the garden fence (and in the presence of its buddies) in about July, I didn't have any more trouble with coons getting into the corn.

The grandbaby sort of came out of nowhere. In Feb. 2008, our son got engaged to his then-girlfriend, whom he'd grown up with here and had known for many years, and then that ended badly in July 2008 when she broke up with him because she wanted to date his best friend (now his former best friend). At that point, he was quite heartbroken and I thought it would be years and years before he married and we finally and eventually became grandparents.

By October, though, he was dating a young woman from Ardmore and by December, she and her then-18-month-old-daugher were spending a lot of time with him...and with us too. By about March or April, I had the feeling that she would one day become our daughter-in-law and that we'd gain the 'bonus' of having an instant granddaughter in the process. Well, G.M., in late July they decided almost spur-of-the-moment to get married before she left for her National Guard training in August. They planned a small wedding in about a week's time, got married, and had about a week together before she left for her military training. So, it was a whirlwind thing. We love our daughter-in-law and granddaughter dearly and are so pleased they have joined our family. Our dear granddaugher is now almost two-and-a-half and every minute we spend with her is precious to us. So, that's the story of how we ended up with a granddaughter in quite an unexpected way.

Dawn

It is such a coincidence that you actually knew the young girl who was killed by the deer recently! I only learned of the tragedy last week in talking to a friend about Jim. I was told she worked at the lake. I did not know her at all. Amazing she was connected to your volunteer fire department. Small world huh?

I am so happy for you that your garden produced so bountifully in spite of the strange weather we had. But I just have to attribute it to your excellent gardening skills. I sure can't say the weather helped anyone or anything.

I was very late putting anything at all in the ground...and only planted tomatoes and peppers. The sweet basil reseeds each year cause I fail to get all the blooms snipped in time...and I didn't pull up all the little marigolds either. So at least I had those. ; ) But with all the rain early on and then the extreme heat setting in. Combined with my lousy back which didn't allow me to get down and work on the garden anyway....mine was a disaster.
But I just don't try much anymore. I give up!

It really says a LOT for either your micro climate or your skills or something cause as I said even some experienced gardeners didn't have good yields this year. Our weather has gotten so bizarre that you just don't even know what to expect. But you are proof that you can overcome even bad weather.

We just wore ourselves totally out watering this year. And our water bill was outrageous! At first of summer I had 31 containers to water!!! It dwindled down a bit later on...due to some things dying and me combining some and also giving some away. I do have to say I did have pretty containers this year though. But I really worked at keeping them looking nice. I actually still have quite a few containers which look good in spite of it being mid November! Amazing!

If my poor little few tomato plants had gotten a fighting chance I likely would be still getting tomatoes too. But they just had too many things stacked against them. And those raised beds of ours seem to be done for. I can't seem to get anything much to grow in them. Many things which shouldn't will grow there if I allow them to stay but not what I want. But with my back problems I am thinking I may have to just give up anyway.

What a blessing about getting the new DIL and Grand daughter in such a surprise way. I knew your son had gotten engaged and recall you were even taking her to look at dresses. It is great it turned out so wonderfully with the break up and him finding someone else so quickly. What an awful ordeal for him to have to go through. But it is good he found out she was capable of such BEFORE they married.

So CONGRATULATIONS on the new DIL and the new grand child!
I pray their marriage is a happy and blessed one.

Well I must get busy. All this proscratination has to stop....lol.

Have a wonderful weekend.
G.M.

I didn't know her....only knew of her in terms of her being a relatively new firefighter with one of our county's fire departments (East Side VFD or Lake Murray VFD, I don't remember which one she had recently joined) and fighting her first house fire earlier on the day she died. You know how it is here....you may not know someone but you know people who know them, etc. House fires are few and far between, and one of our newer firefighters was also fighting his first housefire that same day, even though he's belonged to our department for many months now. I wasn't even there....I was home vacuuming and mopping floors because my sister-in-law was due to arrive from Pennsylania in just a couple of hours, although I had gone to the fire station and loaded up the firetrucks with drinks for the guys to take with them, and then spoke with several other Fire Rehab people by phone to make sure they had enough drinks, ice, coolers, etc. before I returned to my housecleaning. It was a pretty bad house fire that Sunday and they even cancelled church services at a church across the road and sent those folks home because of heavy smoke in the area and the risk of smoke inhalation. It was just a bad day.

You don't give up....you pick your battles and something told you this year that it wasn't worth the fight. I understand that. With me, it is the severe drought periods that make me give up because there is just a point where you have to stop pouring water on the hard clay ground because it just runs off. I think it was luck for me this year, and being stubborn and refusing to give up, too. I do believe the fall harvest ends this weekend, because temps around 36 are now forecast for us on Mon. or Tues. night, and that's assuming Sun. night doesn't go that low. I've been watching the NWS, KXII, Weather Underground and Accu-Weather and trying to make sense of the various forecasts, and I've decided we probably are going to have our first freeze between Sunday and Tuesday.

I've done the whole 'stripping the plants' of the 'final harvest' 4 or 5 different times already this fall when cool temps threatened, but I'll do it again Sat. or Sun. The coldest we've been here in our low-lying microclimate so far this fall has been 35 degrees and we had patchy frost and minor damage to the pepper and tomato plants, although the plants themselves did survive. I'm ready for it to end, though, because the holidays are almost here and I need to get busy with that.

Our water bill was outrageous too during the dry spells, but here in Love County the rain rolled around just often enough to give me up and keep me going. If rain hadn't returned in September, though, I would have just quit watering because we couldn't handle another high water bill. When Tim and I drive by the long-ago-abandoned gardens in our area that haven't produced anything since roughly late July at the best, we are just amazed at the difference in our garden and those because ours still produces. It just goes to show you that if you can manage to water and get through the toughest dry spells of the summer, then you have a good chance at good fall production. I do think Love County consistently had more rain than Carter County this year, and I didn't realize how dry y'all had been until we went to Ardmore one day in August and I looked around as we were driving up I35 and realized y'all were looking really, really dry.

Like you, I have plants in containers looking great for this time of year, and all the sunshine (and, LOL, attention to watering them regularly) has played a role in that. I think the cold may get them next week though.

The whole breakup was so traumatic. Despite the fact that the former fiancee started dating his best friend, DS tried to be mature and remain friendly with them both (he handled the whole situation better than I would have!) but that didn't work out well either. It was VERY hard for us because Kristine was like a member of our family and we stayed in touch with her via the phone for a while, but it just was too awkward. Our new DIL is a jewel, and I hope this marriage lasts. We love her and her daughter dearly and just feel so blessed to have them as members of our family. I always tell people when unexpected things happen that "I think things work out the way they were meant to work out" even if we don't understand why at the time....so that's how I feel about this whole thing. It worked out the way God meant for it to work out.

You have a wonderful weekend too!

Dawn

How are you? did you do your final harvest or did the frost/freeze miss you?

It sure did feel COOL for a couple of days this week didn't it? We got spoiled..and I loved it that way. This cool was not my cup of tea.

To be honest I really don't know for sure if we got frost or not. I have not even been into my back yard all week.
I came down with some kind of "bug" last Saturday and have been sort of ill all week. I am sure ready for this to go away let me tell ya.

I am so happy to hear that your new DIL and grand daughter are a blessing to your life. And so glad your DS came through that horrible experience in one piece. Many have pretty bad problems for a while after something like that happening.

I need to make this pretty short this morning. I have a couple of events I need to attend tomorrow IF and I do mean IF I am feeling up to it. I am already tending to think I may have to bow out of one of them. Being around a bunch of food and people eating right now doesn't sound any fun at all....ugh.

We are coming into what I call "eating season" and I hate going into this season with my stomch on the fritz....hahaha.

I hope you and your family are all well.
I have been meaning to ask about your mom. How is she doing? Best I recall she was going to live near some other family near Ft Worth? Or am I totally off base on that?

Have a great weekend.
G.M.

We were before freezing for several hours and almost everything froze. Some Castor Bean plants that were just barely under the canopy of the pecan tree only lost the top couple of feet of foliage (they were about 8-15' tall), but the rest of the castor beanplants are fine. Some cannas froze, and some didn't, depending on if they were out in the open or if they had taller plants giving them some shelter.

Most of the veggies, herbs and flowers froze, but the Laura Bush petunias did not and neither did the Sweet Alyssum. The Black-eyed Susan vines lost some of their topgrowth, but the lower portions (the bottom 5-6 feet) of the vines are fine. Some of the pepper plants and one tomato (Tess's Land Race Currant) lost upper foliage and small fruit, but lower foliage and fruit survived, although they look worse today than they did a couple of days ago.

The container plants on the patio didn't freeze.

The garden is essentially done and I am OK with that. I got a good 'last chance' harvest of green beans, black-eyed peas, sweet peppers, winter squash, pumpkins, hot peppers, cukes, and tomatoes on the afternoon before the freezing temperatures arrived later that night.

Look elsewhere on this page for my thread about the deer attack in the Enville area.

I hope you make a quick recovery from the bug.

My mom is now 80 years old and on dialysis three days a week. She is still in her home (but probably should be in a nursing home although she equates that with 'death' and won't go to one). I wish people who are diabetics like her, and who (like her) refuse to eat properly and control their diabetes with medication to the extent that they can, could see her and learn from her mistakes. (sigh) She suffers from numerous diabetes complications after 40 years of not taking her diabetes seriously, despite the many pleas from her doctor and children that she try to control her diet and blood sugar. My brother and sister-in-law live a couple of miles from her and check on her daily, as does my niece who often drives about 20-30 miles round-trip daily to check on her.

Mom has deteriorated a lot in the last year and has become a virtual shut-in because of the pain associated with dialysis. We're going to Fort Worth for Thanksgiving this year because my sister doesn't think my mom could handle making the trip up her or down to my cousin's house on the edge of the Hill Country in Texas. Sadly, I don't think my mom's health will allow her to live as long as your mom has, although my mom's mom did live to be 92 and a half. (My grandmother wasn't a diabetic though.)

I hope you have a good weekend and are feeling better before the big eating holiday arrives next week. It is no fun being too sick to enjoy Thanksgiving.

Dawn

I am so sorry to hear that your mother's health is declining so. Mom has been blessed as many of her brothers and sisters have had diabetes, as well as both her parents. There are now only mom and her youngest sis left out of the 8. Neither of them have had diabetes although that same aunt has already lost a son to it. I have lost of couple of cousins to it. So far mom nor any of our family have it. That is a blessing.

You had such a grand garden season I am sure that this late in the year you don't mind too bad not to still be harvesting and preserving. But it sounds like you have quite a lot of pretties around still and that is great for this time of year.

I ended up staying away from both the functions I had planned to attend today due to fear of still being contageous. I have heard so many conflicting stories on how long you are contageous and I looked it up on the net today and was shocked to find that you are contageous for 3 days after symptoms subside! Wow no wonder so much crud goes around. No one stays home that long these days. But I didn't want to be guilty of carrying my germs to anyone. I have had this stuff for an entire week now and still not symptom free.

So ya'll be sure and keep the hand santizer handy I would say. I use it pretty regiously when I get out in public (and have been using it at home as well lately) but something sure got to me anyway. Phooey!

Talk to you later.
G.M.