The llamas, the lion and Louie

My brother-in-law Louie, who lives with my sister Susan in Alta, WY just over the mountain from Jackson, had a terrifying encounter just after Christmas with a mountain lion. Whenever I think about it, I still get the shivers. I grieve Grayson the llama, but I’m deeply thankful it wasn’t my 10 year old nieces, Mila and Lane, who became the snacks. Here’s Louie’s account and some pictures (I’ll put them in the extended section, because they’re graphic).

Sunday morning, December 27, 2009, 9am: We notice the pasture gate open…have llamas escaped? I go out to find Grayson (llama) dead with chunks taken out of him, Widdis (aka Frito) missing, and Miss Philip freaked out, and what appear to be mountain lion tracks hither and yon. I get chills down my spine. I play Daniel Boone and reconstruct the scenario. Lions (pumas) are a llama’s natural enemy and total nightmare, both in South America and here. They went bananas when he showed up. Frito broke the little chain on the gate and fled, and as of this writing, has not been seen since. Grayson had obviously been attacked, but has only a few bites taken out of him—did he die of fright or a heart attack? The marks I see in the snow near the attack scene show an animal clearly leaping 10 feet jumps on an angle toward Grayson. What can jump ten feet three or four times in a row? Only a lion, methinks. There’s Llama wool at the collision site, but no blood. Grayson went down 3 times, got up twice, and is very dead.

I get out my animal tracks book and compare with prints in snow: Lion. I call Game and Fish who refer me to Sheriff who shows up and reaches same conclusion. Lion attack. And now the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. He (the lion) knows where to score easily when he gets hungry again. And the next time. Monday morning, December 28, 2009, 7:15 AM The phone wakes us up. I have to pee. Neighbor says we have a lion in our yard. A LION! I get a little excited, put on different shoes, pants without underwear, try to find my rifle case in closet, grab it, go into kitchen. We look out the window and see a flippin’ mountain lion feeding on Grayson. I’m shaking. I open the gun case, which has rifle but no bullets. Have to pee terribly, but ignore it and retrieve bullets from secret stash. I call the sheriff from yesterday. Tell him the lion is here NOW—should I shoot it? Can G&F dart it and move it? He doesn’t know, says he’ll call back, which he does in 2 minutes and says, “shoot it.” I start thinking about which door to use, decide on new one and hope to lean on roof of car without being seen. I put a shell in the chamber and step out the back door. There are no degrees. It is zero. I am without coat, gloves, and hat, but don’t notice the cold at all. I make it to the car without being made. Of course, if you were eating prime rib, you probably wouldn’t make anybody either. I take the safety off and leaning on the roof of our Honda, find the target in the scope of my .270. It is not quite light yet, and the lion and llama are the same color. Even though it’s only a 60 yard shot, I can’t be certain. Then I notice the lion raises his head once in a while, maybe to swallow? When he does this, his silhouette is obvious. He’s a wild, regal, beautiful dude ...(but he was doing Llama harm). I gotta pee something awful and I have snow in one boot. I put the crosshair on top of his prone body and wait till he comes up again. Up his head comes. Squeeze. He slumps over, seriously hit, it appears. I didn’t miss! I slam another round in the chamber and approach. I’m twenty feet away when he moves, maybe as if he’s gonna put his feet underneath him. I am frozen, stuck to the ground. This is a flippin’ lion, not a groundhog, and he’s probably not at all happy with me whatsoever. “Are you going forward or back?”, I ask myself. (I’m a Gemini) I have to pee like you read about. I decide to approach, but am scared. I put the barrel an inch behind his ear and squeeze the trigger. The ringing in my ear is ridiculous—did I puncture my ear drum? (He daid now) The beautiful lion is history…and all he was doing was trying to make a living. I finally pee. Tomorrow’s another day. There are bears and tigers and rhinos out there.

The associated press picked up on the story, so there were numerous news accounts in papers as far away as the LATimes and the Baltimore Sun.