EEK! I missed it! I never remember to watch things on TV when I hear
about them ahead of time. D*mn.

Yes, great book.

I'm borrowing that one from a friend right now, and have read parts
of it.

I'm also reading a fascinating book called "Beast in the Garden", about
the reappearance of mountain lions in Boulder, Colorado. In the 19th and
early 20th century in the USA, there was a bounty on mountain lions (and
wolves and bears, too), and thousands and thousands of them were killed,
sometimes quite brutally. They (the cougars) became extinct in the eastern
part of the USA, but still lived in remote areas in the west.

In Boulder, people started to encourage wildlife to come into their yards
and neighborhoods. This was partly due to bans on hunting, as well as the
absence of big predators. It was also because people had irrigated the
originally rather arid area, and developed lush gardens and lawns. So,
all manner of wildlife began to hang out in the area, including deer. LOTS
of deer, munching on flowers and other plants in people's yards. Some folks
hated it and complained, but many loved it, and the city's policy was to
leave them alone.

But... where deer go, eventually mountain lions - whose main diet is deer -
will follow, and for the last 10-15 years, people have had them in their
yards, streets, local creeks and parks, and so on. Furthermore, the lions
have become less and less afraid of people, as they venture into inhabited
areas and nothing happens to them. Eventually, some of them have begun to
think of humans as food. And as we all know, cats can learn from their
own as well as each other's experiences. If one sees another attack and
then eat a human, it will attempt to do the same. Some people have been
killed, others injured by cougars. And of course, they are also dangerous
to pets.

I'm maybe about 1/3 of the way through the book and I'm really enjoying
it. It's pretty timely for me to be reading it, as there have been several
reports of mountain lion sightings right in my area. Not exactly on my
street, but in a park area less than a mile from here, as well as in other
human-settled areas in the Bay Area.

Joyce - losing her place on the food chain...