Leadville - Forest ranger Jeff Thompson had crawled into his tent for the night when he heard the noise, a kind of snort or whuff that got his attention.
Bolting outside, he stood face to face with a full-grown mountain lion, with three more staring at him from the background.
"I knew I had to make myself look big, so I reached down and grabbed my sleeping bag and raised it in the air," the veteran Pike-San Isabel National Forest wilderness ranger said in his official report.
Thompson backed up about 5 feet, grabbed a shovel he had left leaning against a fallen tree and started banging it on a rock.
"Two of the lions slowly walked away, and another one came running toward me," he reported. "The lion that ran at me grabbed my sleeping bag out of my hand. ... I took my shovel and struck the lion on the back." http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_2974459#
ATHERTON, Calif. - You would think that if you plunked down $10 million for a home, including millions to buy three adjoining properties, you could count on a little freedom to roam. But then the occasional mountain lion traipses across your land and, if you are Barbara Proulx, you feel trapped, afraid to let your two young sons out by themselves because of the dangers lurking outside. "I won't let my children go to the tennis court by themselves anymore," Mrs. Proulx said. She does not permit the boys, ages 9 and 11, to walk to the pool on their own, either. Her parents live in a home on her property, but "they're terrified."
"Except to come to my house," she said, "they never go outside."
They are hardly the only ones in the area feeling like prisoners in multimillion-dollar homes. In recent months, there have been a few publicized mountain lion sightings up and down this peninsula just south of San Francisco, especially in the area's rural, more upscale neighborhoods, out of the reach of most people beyond venture capitalists and those made outlandishly wealthy by Silicon Valley's star companies.
Yet nowhere has this fear been more pronounced than in Atherton, the country's second-wealthiest community after Rancho Santa Fe, in Southern California. Here, largely because of the efforts of a single neighbor, vast backyards sit largely unused. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/national/28lions.html
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