I don't live there anymore, but around 20 years back I was out early on a quiet Sunday morning with my camera, standing on the trail next to my tripod in the Capitol State Forest just west of Olympia, WA. I was wondering what my next shot might be when there was a movement off to my right. I turned my head and looked, and saw a really weird brown dog galumphing down the trail toward me.
It was short at the shoulder, its legs only half as long as they should have been, and its head bobbed up and down wildly like that of a hobbyhorse. Nothing about this made sense. It was an animal but put together wrong. I was totally confused.
After a scant few seconds I took a step back to get a bit of perspective change, and the dog-thing-whatever instantly turned itself inside out in less an eye blink and was rapidly retreating the way it had come, still brown, still too low to the ground, still baffling.
But I saw its tail then. I saw that. The tail was long. Really, really long. Brown. As thick as my arm, with that distinctive cat-tail curve.
By the time it reversed course it was maybe within 30 feet of me (9m), just on the other side of a short little jog in the trail. Good thing I moved when I did. It was almost on me.
The whole episode was so strange that I was confused for hours, even though I did inspect the trail and found one perfect kitty-print in the dust, about 4" in diameter (10cm). I finally had to admit that it was a cougar, had to have been, and couldn't have been anything else. Only two hours later, long after I'd left the forest, did fright set in.
This happened in total silence.
I've also seen two lynx, one from my car in Olympic National Forest, trotting nonchalantly down the side of a paved road toward me, and the other in Port Angeles, around 4 a.m. within a block of the Olympic National Park headquarters. Crazy-wild long legs, relaxed trot, fuzzy beer can tail, headed south. Lynx don't live on the Olympic Peninsula. Officially.
You never know.
And, a response from our reader...
Funny shaped animals on The Trail
Regarding your cougar encounter...
Soon after I moved to the PNW (from Michigan) in 2000, I was living in a furnished apartment in Eastgate waiting for my house stuff to be packed up and moved out to my new house. I was in the habit of going out for an evening jog up the hill behind my house, on a really nice trail that just happened to be there.
One evening, on my way back home I'm jogging along the trail and see a flash of brown cross the trail in front of me. My midwestern brain says, "deer!" When I got to the section of trail where the brown fur had crossed, I stopped to look for tell-tale deer prints, of which there were none. Which I found odd. I walked backwards down the trail towards home for 50 feet, watching for any sign of anything but couldn't see a thing. So I turned and the instant I turned my back I heard a single branch snap. I whipped back around, looking intently for the something that I now knew was watching me, but I couldn't see a thing. So I continued walking away, backwards down the trail.
As I exited the trail, I paid new attention to the sign, noting that I was indeed trail running on Cougar Mountain.
Matt (Wed, Jan 31, 12:39 PM)
And then Dave sez...
Cats - you never know. Stuff is out there. Also, yet another reason I'll never go hiking on Brokeback Mountain.
What I've found outdoors is that if you stay quiet and don't move around too much, you witness a lot of things, just by being there.
Probably the strangest for me was seeing a water shrew as I was sitting next to a stream drying my feet after crossing it.
Something exploded out of the water and ran across the surface, then plopped back in. Did that twice more while I was there. I eventually found some info on what it must have been. Before that I'd had no idea that there even was such a thing.
This is pretty good...
Tiny Water Shrews Are the "Cheetahs of the Wetlands".
Nature on PBS: "A water shrew is an insectivore no bigger than a thumb..."
Video (<= Until the link rots anyway.)
encounter (n.): Circa. 1300, "meeting of adversaries, confrontation".
From Old French encontre "meeting, fight, opportunity".
Ultimately from Latin in "in" (from PIE root en "in") + contra "against".
Etymonline
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