Mountain Lions

It was about ten to twenty yards south of the Sleepy Hollow entrance that I saw faint tracks in the dust on the left side of the road.

On Tuesday, I went for a walk along the Sage Scrub Trail. There, preserved in the hardened mud along that mountain biker-eroded canyon, I saw a series of about ten tracks.

Yellow police tape and red signs remain looped around the area following this month's earlier mountain lion attack. I suspect that bikers are ignoring the signs.

Was this my lion, the lion that I frightened off last October?

We can and will learn from this. My sincere condolences to the family of the victim, to the woman who was mauled, and the two survivors of the incidents.

Think of it: a biker never stops to look. He is always on the move, always -- in the eyes of the lion -- fleeing. It's like dragging a piece of red yarn in front of your cat. It's going to induce it to pounce.

I came upon a park ranger who was deciding what to do with a dead rabbit. It had clearly been killed and chewed.

I told my neighbors about seeing the mountain lion the other evening.

A sound like breaking tinsel as the body burst out of the grass along the road's edge. A face: white cheeks, black nose and eyes, tan fringes.