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Chapter Two
Melody
Fucking idiots.
A wounded predator, such as a mountain lion, can pose a greater threat to humans or other animals compared to a healthy one. When a predator is injured or wounded, it undergoes various physiological and behavioral changes that impact its ability to hunt and survive. These factors contribute to an increased level of danger presented by a wounded mountain lion.
I break through the trees and see a man standing with a younger man I assume is his son. I can tell they’re not skilled hunters. “I think you missed, Dad,” the boy says.
I run right past them. The man yells, “Hey, that’s my elk!”
So that’s it. The idiot thought a mountain lion was getting his kill and… fucking idiot. He yells again but the yelling stops the moment I pass the elk on the ground, tracking as well as I can by the droplets of blood heading into the trees.
I need to find this cat and kill it. An injured mountain lion experiences a decrease in physical fitness and overall health. Injuries impair the predator's mobility, speed, and agility, affecting its ability to capture prey efficiently. Wounded predators often struggle to keep up with their normal hunting routines, leading to reduced success rates. Consequently, they may become more desperate and aggressive in order to satisfy their hunger, increasing the likelihood of conflict with humans.
And evidently there are fucking humans here.
There’s more. A wounded predator may exhibit unpredictable behavior due to pain and distress. Pain can profoundly affect an animal's mental state, causing it to become disoriented, anxious, or irritable. This altered psychological state can lead to abnormal and dangerous behaviors, escalating the risk of attacks on humans. The diminished physical capabilities coupled with an unpredictable mindset make a wounded mountain lion more prone to engage in aggressive encounters, heightening the potential danger.
Ordinarily, it wouldn’t matter. Not out here. But in a place like this where there aren’t usually humans or many of them, the key to safety is fear. Animals fear things they don’t know, and in this area most of them have not encountered a human. However, injury-induced stress will diminish a predator's fear response, making it less likely to avoid confrontation or retreat when encountering humans. Healthy and undisturbed predators typically exhibit a natural instinct to avoid human interaction as we are not their typical prey. However, when injured, the need for sustenance can override this innate behavior, causing a wounded mountain lion to take higher risks and potentially attack humans or domestic animals that it might otherwise avoid.
The only bright spot about this situation is that we’re removed from even rural civilization. The cat won’t seek familiar areas with livestock and make interactions with humans certain. As I run, following the trail, my mind naturally returns to Russel and the first time we tracked a wounded animal. I wish he were here. He’s an incredible tracker.
But he’s not, and I’m alone.
That doesn’t change at all that this needs to be done.
I burst through the tree line and hear the cat hiss. It’s just about fifteen yards away. I raise my rifle, take aim quickly, and fire.
As soon as I hear the scream, I know I’ve fucked up. It’s a scream of more pain, fright, and rage, but not of death. The cat is additionally wounded, but still alive.
I should have taken my time. I should have just lined up my shot and fired carefully, aiming for the neck or the heart. Instead, I aim for the head, the part of the body that moves more than any other part, not to mention the fact that it’s a much smaller target than the body.
For fuck’s sake, Melody!
What I really should have done was just leave the damned cougar alone. It wasn’t after me. Even though it hissed at me, it didn’t rise. That hiss was the only acknowledgment of my presence at all, and it probably would have just ignored me and moved on. The fucking problem is that the cat, even wounded probably would never have seen another human out here. My anger at the idiot hunters took over, damn it.
Cougars don’t hunt humans. Most animals don’t hunt humans. The truth is that for most creatures capable of easily hunting us, we’re not enough meat and not enough nutritious meat to make it worth their while. For those predators who might see us as an actual meal, we’re usually too big for them to want to risk injury fighting with us.
But when they perceive us as a threat, it’s game on. And by game on, I mean the opposite of a game. I mean serious. Deadly serious.
Deadly enough that the cougar, who up until now didn’t move even though I was less than fifteen yards away from him, now knows that I have the ability to kill him. In the wild, you have two choices when you meet something that can kill you: one, you run away and wait for them to find you and kill you later, or you kill it so that it can’t kill you.
Guess what the mountain lion decides to do?
I try to bring my rifle to bear again, but that thing is scary fast. Mountain lions can run up to fifty miles per hour in short bursts. You can cover ten or fifteen yards very damned fast if you’re moving at fifty miles per hour. Before I can register what’s happening, the cat is on me. It swipes at me with its paw, and I am knocked sprawling. My gun sails harmlessly through the air, landing on the ground a dozen yards away where it is now as useful to me as my cell phone, which I for reasons known only to God decide to leave at home.
God, I’m such a fucking idiot.
I get up and try to run, but I barely make it to my knees before a blow from behind sends me sailing through the air. I’m lucky that the mountain lion overestimates my strength because I can hear the snap of his jaws behind me, inches from my skull.
I land hard and gasp as the wind is knocked out of me. I manage to roll over onto my back and the cat is on me.
I get my arm in between my throat and the cat’s jaw, meaning it sinks its teeth into my forearm and not my neck. I realize, somewhat absurdly, that the cat’s injury works in my favor. It’s balance is off and the pain makes it harder for the cat to focus.
And it’s still so damned strong that it effortlessly picks me up and shakes me like a rag doll.
Humans aren’t very muscular animals. In fact, pound-for-pound, we’re pretty low on the list of strongest animals. See, humans evolved intelligence. That’s our natural superpower. We’re not big and strong like lions, tigers, and bears, but we’re smart as hell. We know how to build tools, and we know how to create specialized tools that give us the ability to far exceed the capabilities of every other animal.
