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OK, I'll be up front with you. Ranger Bob told me about the cougars months ago. So why didn't I spill the beans on this blog when it was news that made the front page banner of the Fargo Forum? Fear is the answer. I used to walk out in Maplewood State Park almost daily. 56572 lives off two things: turkeys and tourists. The latter might not have showed for leaf gawking. Chamber Jane would have put the blame on me. Then a hundred deer hunters were set to invade the Park. Although the hunters were well armed they needed to know that when cougar meets man, cougar usually loses, despite being on the protected species list. All of them got a letter. One of them told the Fergus Daily Journal and soon the story went AP. Already there has been rumor around 56572 that the Minnesota DNR planted these cats here. The cougars will eat all the deer leaving the hunters freezers empty next fall. Here's hoping the wild turkeys in Maplewood survive the winter and the cats seek warmer climes.

The article is already safely tucked away in the Forum's pay-per-view archive. I thought it was a good article. Hopefully it saves a two or a four legged life. Here it is:

Cougars roaming Maplewood park
By Dave Olson dolson@forumcomm.com
Front page - 11/22/2004

Minnesota’s Maplewood State Park, renowned for its fall colors, is getting known for something else these days -- cougar sightings. After three reported sightings in the past two weeks, Park Manager Robert Hanson is convinced at least one big cat is roaming the area. “I think there have been enough sightings to say it’s confirmed,” Hanson said. The park had one cougar sighting in 2002 and another in 2003. Four encounters were reported this past summer, including one in August when horseback riders spotted two half-grown cubs on a park trail. Some cougar spotting is also occurring outside the park. Last spring, Hanson spied a big cat about six miles east of Maplewood. No location seems more cougar-prone than another and by all accounts, the animals, also called mountain lions, shunned human contact, Hanson said. Park visitors should be wary and keep young children close while walking trails, Hanson said, but he’s not too concerned. “All the sightings have been of cougars moving away or trying to get out of sight,” he said. “They’re not aggressive in any way, or even curious.”The threat posed by mountain lions is small, said Karen Cotton, director of outreach for the Mountain Lion Foundation in Sacramento, California. Cougars have claimed fewer than 20 human lives in North America in the past century, she said.“They’re not out to get us. If they were, trust me, that number would be a lot higher,” said Cotton, whose organization is dedicated to the conservation and preservation of mountain lions and their habitat. Many encounters between humans and lions result in disaster -- for the cats, she said.“Just about any time people start complaining about a mountain lion, it almost always means the mountain lion is going to be killed,” she said. That’s what happened to a male cat that wandered into Yankton, S.D., in June. Though the cougar ran when confronted, wildlife and law enforcement officials shot the animal under a state policy that calls for destroying mountain lions judged to be a substantial threat to public safety. On average, 10 mountain lions are killed every day in the United States, either through hunting or by special permit because they were deemed a threat to livestock, Cotton said. On the rare occasions when cougars attack people, the target is typically a bike rider or jogger, Cotton said. To the cats, the humans probably looked like running deer, their natural prey, she said. The best defense against an aggressive mountain lion is to be aggressive right back: People who fight typically survive, Cotton said. When confronted by a cougar, puffing up your size by flapping your jacket or standing close to a companion may be enough to scare it off, she said. “Mountain lions, because they are solitary animals, can’t afford to get hurt,” she said. “If they don’t perceive something as being prey, they’re going to leave it alone. ”As many as six wild cougars may be living in Minnesota, but there is no established breeding population, said Conrad Christianson, furbearer/depredation program consultant for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.The cougars have not created any problems so far, he said. Mountain lions can roam great distances in search of a territory to call their own, Cotton said. Earlier this summer, a male cougar that was caught in South Dakota and given a radio collar was struck and killed by a train in Oklahoma, Cotton said. “He had traveled about 700 miles,” Cotton said. “They don’t stay in place. Even a mother with her cubs stays on the move.”