I didn't get a sketch out yesterday because I was trying to draw something larger, more complicated than I could finish in one day. After realizing this, when it was clear that there was no way that I was going to finish it, I started a simpler composition. But it was too late to finish it too, so I said, "Forget it," and went to bed!
What I started too late was this mountain lion. I had heard that the nearby town of Roseville had a mountain lion sighting.
Mountain lions, cougars, pumas, catamounts, like raccoon, coyotes and deer have often been sighted within urban areas. But mountain lions are actually solitary, nocturnal animals. They need about 30 square miles to live in. While there have been attacks on people, they usually avoid humans and we hardly ever see them. Like domestic cats, they will chase a moving object, like a mountain biker or a runner. The best thing to do when encountering a big cat is to stand your ground and make yourself look larger and make lots of noise.
They do avoid people. When I was staying with my sister in Colorado, we saw lots of mountain lion tracks around the house. My sister and her husband live on 40, hard to access acres. They get lots of wildlife out there. I used to take walks everyday around there and never saw a mountain lion. I did hear one however. I had two large dogs that went with me where ever I went. On one of my walks, we were walking under a grove of small trees I had the distinct feeling that we were being watched. As soon as we walked out of the grove, the cat screamed at us. While I have no illusion that one of these cats could take down and kill a large dog, I was confident that this cat was not going to come after us. It was just mad that we were trespassing in it's area.
Another year, this same sister said that she had a brief encounter with a mountain lion. It bounded off of her front deck at dusk when she flipped on the porch light to go to barbecue a plate of hamburgers.
While backpacking with a group, a ranger told us about how he loved to take long hikes in the evening in Yosemite. On one of those hikes, a mountain lion followed him all along the entire hike, from the Yosemite valley floor to the Tuolumne Meadows. I always thought that an evening hike like that would be fun!
http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/tuolumne.htm
So the mountain lion is not really a scary animal, but one that we need to learn how to live with in an ever expanding human population. https://www.dfg.ca.gov/keepmewild/lion.html
http://www.defenders.org/mountain-lion/basic-facts
So I drew a mountain lion.
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