The early Spanish explorers of the Americas once called the creature amigo del cristiano, friend of the Christian--an odd name for a lion. That beneficent image was probably owing to Native American beliefs in the beast's role in maintaining harmony between heaven and humankind. The Chickasaw called the feline "the cat of God." And for centuries, puma concolor (a.k.a. mountain lion, cougar, panther, catamount) avoided people. It was an elusive presence: a tail vanishing into the bush, a distant snarl, the rare but startling act of God.
Well, prepare to meet your maker. Suddenly it seems humans are encountering mountain lions from Texas to Canada. Just last week rangers took the rare step of closing down part of the 25,000-acre Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, 40 miles east of San Diego, so federal trackers and state game wardens could kill a mountain lion that stalked three hikers in recent days. At one point, the lion even swiped at one of them, but it missed. And it gets scarier than that. In May, Mary Jane Cooder was taking pictures during a walk in Big Bend National Park in Texas when she saw through the viewfinder that her eight-year-old was upset. "I turned around and saw there was a big mountain lion getting ready to pounce," she said. Cooder drew her three girls behind her and pulled a pocketknife from her backpack. She waved the knife and screamed, but the cat kept running at her children, she says, "trying to cut them out of the herd like they were baby deer." After ducking under ledges while flailing at the cougar, Cooder and her children made it safely back into their car.
On July 31, a six-year-old camper was pulled from the jaws of a mountain lion by a 16-year-old counselor on a hiking trail near Missoula, Mont. The animal slunk away and was later tracked and killed; the child suffered puncture wounds and numerous scratches. In April, in Villa Park, Calif., which is about six miles east of Disneyland, a cougar climbed into a pine tree in Alice Thompson's backyard, leaped onto her front porch and nudged at the door before trying to jump a fence into a neighboring yard. Animal-control officials killed the 97-lb. male and later discovered that it hadn't eaten in days. In other places, pumas invade yards to steal away dogs and other pets--or simply to cool off at the garden sprinkler. One big cat even wandered into a mall in Montecito, Calif. "The intensity of the sightings has increased," says Howard Quigley, a senior wildlife biologist and cougar expert at the Hornocker Wildlife Institute in Idaho. "We get phone calls every week."
Between 1890 and 1990, only nine fatal attacks were recorded in North America. So far, there have been three this decade. What startles wildlife experts is that the lions are no longer behaving like lions. "These lions are letting themselves be seen easily in broad daylight," says Yosemite researcher and wildlife biologist Leslie Chow. "That's atypical behavior, and it bothers us." Their behavior has become such a public-safety issue that Yosemite's management has consulted attorneys about potential lawsuits and posted warning signs to help waive liability. Chow is in the middle of a study to radio-collar Yosemite's lions and establish their patterns of territoriality and feeding around humans. A primary question: Do the lions now see humans as part of the food chain?