Last Thursday night, Bodhi and I saw a cougar!
It was 9:30, just starting to get dark.
We were coming home from our evening walk and Bodhi alerted.
I flipped my flashlight up at the dark shape running across the road.
Deer have yellow eyes when you shine a light at them.
Their eyes appear shoulder high.
These eyes were emerald green and waist high.
Bodi started going berserk trying to get at it.
Nice kitty, please keep going...

Oi vey...what a week for wildlife!!! Jennifer's goats, your cougar and my bear...what's next?

Cougars are no joke. I will take a bear any day over a cougar. We have a bobcat that comes up to our fence sometimes that pester the dogs. We also have a donkey that comes up and tries to bite the dogs over the fence. It frustrates me the most of the animals we deal with regularly. Cougars are one of the big reasons I started carrying a gun on my back country hikes. They aren't too bad yet around here coming into places that are heavier trafficed but in the deeper reaches they are still there and they will attack. We lose calves to them occasionally.

With the Big Bend National Park east and south of me; the Big Bend Ranch State Park west of me and the huge Manuel Benavides Mexican Federal Park and the Maderas del Carmen Protection Area south of me - I suppose it goes without saying that we have plenty of cats and bears around.  Thankfully they all, generally, stay in the back-country.

We have a herd of donkeys that run around this area as well - in fact we have signs on the road

since they have a bad habit of stopping in the middle of the road and staring us down!

I don't know what's worse coming over the top of a hill and being greeted by a herd of deer, a herd of donkeys or a 'herd' of peccaries.  Any of them will cause a heart palpitation (at the least) and a totalled car at the worst!

(( truth in advertising: that's not our sign but it's real close to what we have ))