In my last post I mentioned that we live in the mountains on about eight acres and regularly see a litany of wildlife including deer, turkey, big horn sheep, rattlesnakes and mountain lions in the valley out front of our home or in the ravine down below.

Over the years, we’ve had several run-ins with mountain lions. It’s a bit scary.

One occurred several years ago, while my wife was reading in the front living room one evening and she heard a slight banging on one of the many floor-to-ceiling windows that wrap around the room and separate it from a wrap-around deck.

It was dark so she turned on the deck light to see what was lurking. Staring through a window was a massive male lion, unfazed by the light. Instead, he continued banging his head on the window, trying to get in – likely to consume our large house cat that was sleeping on a visible chair.

When the window wouldn’t budge, the lion walked around the corner and tried to come through another window on the other side of the deck. Failing that, he slowly walked down the steps, off the deck, and into the night.

Another time, on a wintery morning as we were about to take the kids to school, we noticed the snow in our front valley had a significant red trail running from the middle of the valley around the side of our house and down the back ravine.

We followed the blood trail to just below our first-floor deck where it ended – where the life of a bighorn sheep ram had ended as well. What was fascinating was that the lion had killed the ram and slit its stomach open apparently with a claw in such a clean fashion that it appeared as though it was using a scalpel.

Even more fascinating was that the lion had removed every organ except the distended stomach and consumed them. To remove the organs, the lion had only about a four-inch clearance between the stomach and the other organs, so it had to work with amazing precision.