Chasing wolves with paintball guns - Part 1

One day, I stalked some wolves with a paintball gun.

Wolves are pretty smart. They're resourceful, too, which often leads them into trouble. When I volunteered on the Mexican Wolf Blue Range Reintroduction Project, I had to spend a few weeks dealing with a pair of resourceful wolves who, having found themselves hungry and in unfamiliar territory in the Gila National Wilderness of New Mexico, rather quickly identified a handy solution: haunt the campsites of the nearby National Monument.

Map of the area. The large green blob is the Gila Wilderness.

Because livestock depredation can be a serious temptation for the Mexican wolves in the reintroduction area, one of the jobs of us volunteers was occasionally to "haze" wolves away from livestock when they got too close for comfort. Most of the wolves had radio collars, so if one of us drove through ranch land and detected a wolf nearby, or the ranchers reported wolf sightings, we would spend the next few evenings sitting near the herds with paintball guns to prevent a depredation. As a volunteer, the only firearm I was cleared to handle was a paintball gun. The technicians who were employed by the Arizona or New Mexico state wildlife management agencies were cleared to handle shotguns loaded with nonlethal ammunition including cracker shells (also known as "noisemaker rounds"), beanbag rounds, and rubber bullets. Prior to the following story, I had only gone out on one or two hazing excursions during which the wolves never actually approached the livestock.

This story begins with two wolves, a male and female, who were translocated from captivity to the Gila Wilderness in an effort to start a new pack. I can't remember the particular backgrounds of the two wolves who were chosen, but I don't believe either one had been born in captivity. Sometimes wolves are moved to captivity if they're injured, orphaned, or have shown an inclination to kill livestock. After that, they are genetically profiled. Decisions to breed wolves in captivity or translocate them to other locations are based on a synthesis of all the data about the genetic potential, behavioral history, and health of each wolf, in conjunction with the status of the wild wolves and the identification of "holes" in the reintroduction area that could be filled with new individuals, to boost the genetic diversity and size of the entire population.

This particular pair of wolves was dubbed the Laredo Pack. The field team translocated them via a "soft release", in which a temporary enclosure is built and the wolves can chew their way out when they're ready to go. The wolves' diets were supplemented by a few other volunteers who stayed with them in the heart of the Gila Wilderness while the wolves got used to their surroundings. The Laredo Pack didn't spend too long in their temporary enclosure, flying the coop after only a few days.

The field crew monitored them in the area for a few extra days, then packed up their mules and headed back to the field office. It soon became clear, however, that the wolves weren't being so successful in locating food on their own; at some point in their wild roaming, they stumbled upon what must have seemed like a jackpot to them: the campsites at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.

The National Monument is located about an hour up a windy two-lane road north of Silver City, New Mexico, which is itself two and a half hours away from the Mexican wolf field office in Alpine, Arizona. The Monument is relatively small, with a visitors center, a small number of campgrounds, and some trails winding around to view the cliff dwellings or connect to larger trails that traverse the Gila Wilderness. There is a small town called Gila Hot Springs located just east of the Monument, in which a few people raised livestock.

Because of the livestock nearby, and the fact that the wolves were being spotted looting campsites during the early mornings and evenings, my supervisors decided to keep a staff member in the area 24/7 to haze the wolves as often as possible until they left. The other volunteers and the New Mexico state technician on the project (James) took the job in shifts, usually lasting about a week. I was the first person to go, and ended up having to go a second time right before I left the project. My supervisors had made arrangements for us to stay in a crappy cabin shared by two incredibly socially awkward fisheries scientists doing research in the Gila River (I think the West Fork). They had the craziest work schedules, and no place for me to sleep; as a result, on my second trip, I purchased a mattress pad from a store in Silver City and slept in the back of the Ford Explorer (which also didn't have a working radio, so I drove the whole 7-hour round trip with my iPod plugged into my iHome plugged into a power converter plugged into the cigarette lighter, which, oddly enough, did work).

Since wolves are most active during dusk and dawn (i.e. the "crepuscular" hours - how's that for science vocab?), I spent my days hiking the trails, checking out the cliff dwellings, chatting with the visitors center staff, reading, and making my rounds to the campgrounds to talk to the campers, asking if they'd seen anything, and telling them about proper food storage. Sometimes huge storms would roll in in the evenings, with dangerous lightning, torrential downpours, and frightening gusts of wind tearing through the willows and cottonwoods around the cabin, and I'd sit in the cheap outdoor furniture on the wraparound, screened-in porch and watch.

I monitored the wolves' radio signals closely, trying to learn their habits and figure out where they went during the day. For the most part, their signals were only barely audible; there are many creeks and canyons surrounding the National Monument, and they could have been hunkering down in any one of them. The one time I did try to hike back into the Wilderness to find them, I got so frustrated with the number of river crossings that I gave up - after all, not only is constantly taking on and off yours boots annoying, but toting thousands of dollars' worth of telemetry equipment over slippery rock beds over and over again isn't exactly prudent. I settled for hiking up to the top of one of the ridges every day to get a general idea where they were, then waiting for night to fall so my real work could begin.

Main road along the river, between the cliff dwellings
 trailhead and visitors center access road. 

It was interesting work. I have two good stories to tell about the time I spent here. For the most part, though, starting around dusk, I would just drive the main road back and forth between the visitors center and the trailhead to the cliff dwellings, scanning constantly with the roof antenna to listen for changes in the volume and quality of the signals. Later, I would sleep in the Explorer and wake up every hour to make another trip down the road. If I felt like the wolves were getting too close to the campsites, I would park the truck and stand there with my paintball gun at the ready, a sort of guardian of the campsites, sometimes hiking past the sleeping campers up the ridge behind and firing a bunch of warning rounds out into the darkness. I don't know how effective it was; the wolves never got close enough for me to hit them, and my objective was just to impress upon them the futility of their haunting by never letting them get access to the camp food.

One night, as I made another round, driving slowly and quietly down the road with the windows open, listening to the Gila River flowing swiftly on the other side of the thick rushes that separated it from me, a large herd of javelina ran out in front of my truck. I killed the engine, listening to their grunting and looking at my headlights reflected in their eyes as they turned and trotted past me down the road.

-----

The first story involves my coworker James, who was a volunteer with me before being hired on as the New Mexico technician for the wolf project. Because he was a paid employee, he was permitted to use the shotguns with nonlethal ammunition to haze the wolves.

James was sent out to take over the next shift at the Cliff Dwellings, but our shifts overlapped by a day or two so I could tell him what I'd learned. Since there were two of us, and we finally had more powerful ammunition, we decided to make a more concerted effort to locate the wolves and scare the crap out of them. Thus, very early one morning, we convened at a corral east of the campsites, a spot I'd located that provided easier access to the ridgeline north of the main road, and allowed us to avoid bothering the sleeping campers. James took his shotgun, and I took my paintball gun and the telemetry equipment.

Map of the area. The encounter described took place north of the main east-west road. 

It was a creepy morning. All was gray and silent, with a thick fog rolling through the canyons and up onto the ridges. We left the truck at the corral and headed uphill, arriving at the top of the ridgeline easily and hiking northwestward, all the while monitoring the radio signals. The male's signal was louder, but the female was nearby too. We sneaked along as quickly and quietly as we could through the scrubby vegetation.

The signals got louder and louder. I motioned to James to proceed more slowly. With the fog, we could see maybe 40-50 feet in front of us.

To our left - west - there was a shallow gully that separated our hillside from the one next to us. By now, the male wolf's signal was so strong, even with the gain on my receiver down extremely low, that I knew he had to be somewhere on the adjacent hillside. James walked in front of me a few paces, his eyes fixed ahead, as I followed with my gaze directed westward.

Suddenly, silently, like a ghost, the figure of the male wolf appeared out of the fog on the hill beside us. "James!" I whispered urgently. He whipped his head around and saw the wolf too, just as the wolf saw us and made a dash back into the cover of the clouds, heading northwest. James threw his shotgun to the ready and fired two cracker shells in his direction. I followed suit, albeit pathetically, with paintballs.

James quickly reloaded his shotgun and we took off running after the wolf, dipping down into the shallow gully and emerging on the other hillside where the wolf had been moments ago. We really had no hope of catching him, but James was determined to dog him, firing off more cracker shells as often as he could to tell the wolf we meant business. By the radio signals, I could tell that the male's signal was getting further and further away, but the female's was still somewhere north of us. It too was receding.

Finally, we gave up. I was out of paintballs, the sun was higher, the fog was burning off, and the radio signals were barely audible. The wolves were probably in a canyon somewhere. James and I turned around and headed back to the truck, which proved to be a bit more of a challenge than we expected - with the excitement of the chase, and the fog obscuring our view, we couldn't really remember how we'd gotten where we were. Fortunately, we were prepared with a GPS unit, and we eventually found our way back to the truck.

I returned to Alpine soon after. From James's reports, and the reports of the volunteer who went to the Monument after him, the wolves were still staying in the area, though they weren't coming down into the campsites as often. Thus, three weeks later, I arrived at the cliff dwellings once again. And that's when Part 2 happened.

To be continued....

Mistakes - Part 1 of many

One day, I discovered I ought to learn more about plumbing.

I've made many mistakes in my career as a biologist or field technician. Losing field equipment, damaging a vehicle, or similar things are embarrassing and sometimes expensive, but these things don't usually stick with me - what sticks with me most are the times I've made assumptions, had a bad attitude, or let my ambitions get the better of me at work, creating memories I wish I didn't have. Maybe I'm depressed right now, or homesick, or whatever, but for some reason I feel like expounding on some of the times I've made bad choices which have impacted my relationships with my supervisors and coworkers, and maybe even impacted my future in this field. I sure hope not.

It's not good to harbor regrets, but maybe these memories can be useful to someone by showing him or her what not to do.

I'll start with a lighter, shorter story, though, a little mistake that falls more in the category of "embarrassing and sometimes expensive" errors, and only slightly in the other, more serious category.

When I worked in Yellowstone, we all lived in small travel trailers in a residential area near the Lake intended for temporary employees and volunteers. The trailers were connected for electricity, gray water drainage, and fresh water for drinking and cooking, but we had to use nearby bathroom buildings to take showers and use the toilets. The electricity and water we used were monitored per trailer site, and the cost came out of the grant money for our boss's research study. Heating and gas for cooking were provided by small propane tanks attached outside the trailer.

I arrived late in the season to fill in for another employee who had to go back to school. My first day was sometime in the beginning of September. The Lake area of Yellowstone is at an altitude of about 8000 feet or more, and in September, the cold weather really starts to settle in. Nighttime freezing temperatures are common, as are freak snowfalls.

For my first few days of work, I slept in my trailer by myself. My roommate Shannon was visiting Livingston, Montana where she lived with her husband on her days off, and a friend of my boss Jenn, who was visiting from Idaho, was using the spare bed - but the two of them were off on a multi-day camping trip. I hadn't even met my boss yet, actually.

I awoke for a day of front-country hiking to collect bear data, the morning dawning bright and cold. I staggered to the sink and turned the tap to fill up my tea kettle, but no water came out - the pipes had frozen during the night.

In my drowsiness, I realized I couldn't remember which direction I had turned the tap. I experimented with the other tap, the hot water one, but it didn't really help me figure out the problem. If the hot tap turns on to the left, does that mean the cold tap does the same? Or are they opposite? I'm not a plumber. I had no idea how these things work, and I've lived in so many places with so many little differences in things like plumbing that I couldn't remember if I'd ever observed a clear pattern with these things.

I had a 50/50 chance. So I picked a side and cranked the tap all the way, got my things together, and left the trailer. I had to meet my coworkers and other boss, Justin, at their two trailers, which were side by side and located a bit further down the road. We discussed the day's plans and headed out to the West Thumb area, where Justin trained me and the other new employees, Gabe and Caryn, in the field collection techniques.

After a day of fun scooping mushroom-y bear poop and identifying day beds, I returned to my trailer. I walked through the door to find things slightly re-arranged - apparently Jenn and her friend had returned from their trip sometime during the day. I also noticed some wet towels hanging around the sink area.

As I began preparing dinner, standing over the sink, a face appeared outside the kitchen window. "Rebecca?" she said. I put down what I was working on and walked outside.

"You must be Jenn!" I said cheerily. After all, first impressions are everything.

"Yeah," she said. She didn't look happy.

"How was your trip?" I asked, now a bit uncertain.

"Good. So, did you know that you left the tap turned all the way on, and it flooded the trailer?"

Oops.

I tried to explain about the frozen pipes, and how I couldn't remember which way I'd turned the tap. She never broke a smile, instead making sure I knew about how she had to pay for all the water we used out of her grant money, and how all I needed to do was turn the faucet to a slow drip during the night to keep the pipes from freezing again. I apologized and went back inside with my tail tucked between my legs.

Well, so much for that first impression.

Stuck in the Mud

One day, I discovered that four-wheel-drive is no match for clay and gravity.

I love trucks. When it comes to sedans, I'll always favor Honda, but in my opinion nobody makes a truck like Chevy. Often, state and federal wildlife agencies will have a suite of vehicles available for field use. When I worked for the USGS, I drove a Dodge Durango and an old Ford Bronco; but for almost every other job, I drove Chevys.

When I worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project, I think we had 10 or so trucks to use at the field office. There were at least 5 Dodge Rams (my least favorite), 2 Fords (including an Explorer with a fried electrical system and a ginormous F-250), and 3 Chevys (two Silverados, and a wrecked Colorado that a volunteer had flipped some years before, left in the parking lot as a reminder for us to be careful on the curvy roads).

My trusty white Chevy in Willow Creek, NM

When I worked on that project, I didn't know how to drive a manual transmission and nobody wanted to teach me. Since the Explorer sucked, the F-250 was way too big for our everyday field needs, and most of the Dodges were manual, I had my choice of the two Chevys. Thus, an old, white, beat-up Silverado became my faithful steed.

Although it was old, it was reliable. I took that thing on the roughest roads Arizona and New Mexico could throw at me, only once got a flat tire and never got stuck in the snow or mud. My coworkers would come back after long days of having to dig their Dodges out of ridiculously small patches of snow, and once my friend spent hours digging herself out of being high-centered on a sandy road in a very remote part of the Gila National Forest. 

My biggest problems ended up being the tailgate rattling off its hinges and the right taillight falling out of its socket as I sped around on the bumpy washboard roads. It also, apparently, had bad brakes - they worked, but only if you floored the pedal. I didn't realize that was a bad thing until somebody else drove it and told me. My own personal stupidity also caused problems once or twice: Once, as I was backing out of a "parking space" in the office (see picture: parking and reversing was a constant game of hide-and-seek with mature pine trees), I cut the tires to swing to the left without noticing the pine tree I'd parked next to coming towards the driver's-side window. I ended up partially removing the mirror and making a huge dent in the driver's side door, which my boss tried unsuccessfully to pop out later with a plunger. 

The office.

It took a few days for the mirror to be fixed, so in the meantime I drove the other Chevy - a green Silverado with a few more thousand miles and slightly less reliability. But it was still a Chevy. 

One day, my task was to drive around some dirt roads near the Arizona - New Mexico border to look for signs of uncollared wolves - a frequent task that involved driving slowly with your head out the window scanning for tracks and scat on the side of the road. I was in an area south of the main highway in the national forest, in hills too steep to allow for reliable radio transmission, and not a town, house, or campground in site. 

It had rained recently. The dirt in that area was such that, when wet, it filled every tiny tread in our tires and made the roads gooey chutes of rich red-brown clay slicker than ice. As I headed gently downslope toward the river on the curvy roads, I tested the roads in the wider sections to determine how fast I could reasonably go without sliding around too much (a boundary I'm rather fond of pushing sometimes).

I wanted to make a big loop, starting low in the southeast and heading west and north and up until I met back with the main highway. Consulting my map, I saw that if I could reach the terminus of the east-west road, I'd hit a bigger road that would take me north, giving me a fast and easy exit back to pavement. The further and further west I drove on these sketchy roads, the more my determination grew to make it to this bigger road, to not have to turn around. Thus, when I finally crossed the river and found myself staring up at the road winding steeply up the other side, I didn't instantly admit it as a disaster waiting to happen. 

The green Chevy on Greens Peak, Arizona.

I started creeping up the hill, when suddenly a black Suburban came around the corner in reverse. As I backed up and waited, it slowly, ponderously, methodically navigated the sharper curves and made it down to me. They rolled down their windows. It was a couple of tourists from a campground several miles away, exploring the muddy wilderness. They told me they'd tried to make it up the steep hill, but it was just too muddy and slick. They turned around and drove back the way I'd come.

Even that didn't deter me. My truck was lighter, and I figured I was more experienced with four-wheel driving than they were. Stubbornly, I put the truck in gear and crept slowly back up the hill. The road was flanked by a steep downhill on my left (south) side, with a cliff on my right. Between the road and the cliff wall was a shallow ditch filled with thick mud. 

After ten or so minutes with no improvement in the road, and no end in sight, I finally decided to give up. As the road was far too narrow for turning around to be an option, I'd have to copy the tourists and head all the way down in reverse. I made it most of the way and was on the final curve, when I miscalculated and went straight for the ditch. Before I could correct, my right wheels had already slipped down the gentle curve, and the rest of the truck slowly, inexorably, followed. 

I was stuck. I spent a few minutes shifting in and out of 4WD, shifting back and forth between reverse and drive to try to get whatever little momentum I could in the limited space. Try as I might, I just couldn't give my right side enough traction to breach the little bank of mud separating me from freedom. The more I tried, the deeper the holes I dug, the more I became enmeshed in the ditch's grip. 

Of course, the steepness of the hill prevented me from successfully contacting anyone on the radio. I had no handheld, just the built-in system in the truck, and I'd stopped carrying a cell phone long ago for the lack of reception. I half-hoped the tourists had stuck around to make sure I'd gotten out OK, but they were nowhere in sight, and they never returned. 

I was on my own. I could either wait here for someone in the office to realize I wasn't coming back, and come find me (they knew the general area in which I'd gone), or I could try to get myself out. 

I made a quick inventory of my supplies. A shovel. My floor mats. My clothes. Some planks of wood in the bed? Where did those come from? They might come in handy. I had a winch, too, but I had no idea how to use it. 

I got to work with the shovel and the floor mats, digging troughs beneath the tires and stuffing the floor mats underneath, digging pits for the wooden planks in front. Periodically I would re-enter the truck, play around with the gears, and re-exit to rearrange my system, getting close but never quite close enough. 

I was covered, head to toe, in mud. I had actually taken off my boots because they'd gotten so heavy with the stuff, and my bare feet gave me better traction in the slippery mess anyway.

Finally, after about an hour, I re-entered my truck for the last time. A little bit of reversing, then a jolt of forward momentum, a second or two of suspended motion and uncertainty, and then - I was free! 

I got out one last time to retrieve the planks and floor mats. Then I did a little dance. I thought briefly about the next person who would come up this road looking for wolf sign, and wondered what they'd think of this strange, sudden appearance of  bare human footprints in the middle of the road. 

It was late in the evening when I finally got back to the office. I stepped through the door in a blaze of glory, proud of my muddy clothes and my muddy truck outside, because I - little old me, a 24-year-old, female, relatively experienced field volunteer - had dug my truck out of the mud all by myself. 

Unfortunately, nobody was there. 

Although I soon went back to driving my trusty white Chevy, I had developed a sort of bond with the green one now. It had been just me and that truck out in the wilderness. By getting stuck, it had humbled me, revealed the flaws in my assumption that I was invincible; but then it hadn't left me stranded, either. We were a team. 

Terrace Point and Bridge Bay

One day, I learned I hate boats.

If you've been following my writing, you may remember a few brief allusions to riding in a boat on Yellowstone Lake when I was there studying bears. I said then that I have a particular aversion to all modes of transportation in which there is not more or less constant contact with solid ground; boats and planes, sadly, do not meet this criteria. I assure you, however, that this aversion to unnatural vehicles (completely unnatural: if man were meant to fly, or skip across bodies of water, he'd have been given either wings or fins) developed logically as a result of real experiences.

The Yellowstone bear project, back in 2007, had two boats at its disposal: One was called the Silvertip (or The Tip, for short; "Silvertip" is another name for grizzly bear), and the other was called the Ursus. I know nothing about boats, so I won't even pretend to know what kinds of boats these were. They were small. They each had one propeller. The Silvertip had a green canvas removable top and limited seating - riding in the back was similar to riding in the bed of a truck - but the Ursus had a permanent cover and a comfy row of seats lining each side of the cabin. The Ursus was brand spanking new, and the Tip definitely had some miles under its keel. But despite the higher level of comfort and luxury provided by the weatherproof cover of the Ursus, not to mention the draw of its shiny newness, most of us actually preferred the Tip. It had proven itself worthy over years of abuse on the unforgiving waters of Yellowstone Lake, while the Ursus had still to earn our trust. 

Yellowstone Lake is a large natural lake in the southeastern quadrant of Yellowstone National Park. Major park roads run alongside the western and northern shores, but the southern and eastern shores are inaccessible except by trails (one of which is called the Thoroughfare Trail, and runs along most of the eastern shore). Backcountry campgrounds and cabins exist here and there along the trail systems, and we utilized quite a few of them during multi-day bear sampling excursions. When the bears hung out in the backcountry south and east of the Lake, the easiest way to get there was to take the boat to the opposite shore. 

The employee/volunteer trailer park was located west of the road between Lake Village and Fishing Bridge (located at the junction of the two main roads). The Tip and the Ursus were housed in Bridge Bay Marina, a small inlet protected from the wind  that nearly constantly blew across the Lake. When departing in the boat from Bridge Bay, boats had to pass underneath the main road, after which the inlet widened and soon ejected its hapless victims into the unprotected expanse of the Lake's main body. 

Sign located on the bridge when leaving Bridge Bay

It was very common for strong winds to blow northeast through the West Thumb channel, creating surprisingly large breakers and conditions too dangerous for boating. Other days, however, the Lake was smooth and clear as glass, and speeding southeast from Bridge Bay to the South or Southeast Arms, in a pristine Lake in one of the country's most pristine national parks, the canvas top of the Tip removed and the autumn wind whipping over the windshield, was absolutely glorious. 

We had three people on our team who were licensed to drive the boat: George, a dedicated boat driver volunteer who worked for us and for the fisheries folks, as well as both the graduate students on the project, Jenn and Justin. In addition, the trapping crew, who caught the bears for us and with whom we only worked occasionally, also needed the boats at times, and the leader, Craig, was licensed to drive them. 

Landing the boat could be quite tricky. Docks are few and far between on the Lake, especially in the undeveloped South and Southeast Arms. In many places, broad, sandy beaches line the shoreline, and we could simply rev the engine, lift the prop as the depth decreased, and glide up as far as possible onto the beach. Then a group of us would leap off the bow and the driver would push off the beach with a long pole, coming back later to repeat the process and pick everybody up. George's season ended before ours did, so when Jenn or Justin was driving, it was more common for us to tug the boat further up onto the sand with long ropes and secure the anchor to some trees or logs, and come back for it later in the day. I fondly remember many occasions as we approached the beach, me sitting at the stern with a pair of polarized glasses, shouting depth estimations to the driver so he could pull up the prop before it hit the gravelly lake bottom. 

However, there was one spot along the eastern shore that was quite different. It was called Terrace Point. There were no beaches here; the surrounding hills sloped abruptly into the Lake, the Thoroughfare Trail carving a path alongside or sometimes further away where the terrain was flatter. At Terrace Point, a large rocky outcrop jutted a few meters into the Lake. Landing here entailed ramming this rock and leaping one by one onto it from the bow. It had to be done quickly, before the pounding waves could turn the boat sideways where it would be easier to roll, and where the prop could be damaged by the rocks on shore.  

I recall many occasions when Terrace Point landings went smoothly. However, it only took one bad day to erase all those memories from my mind. 

I think I actually took this picture on the day in question.

We were on the Tip. All 6 of us departed at Bridge Bay and headed out into the Lake, Justin driving, the plan being to land at Terrace Point and send off a group of 4 for a multi-day stint in the backcountry. I was to stay behind with Justin so the two of us could tackle some other data points closer to Madison Junction after we returned the boat to Bridge Bay. The day was windy; crossing the West Thumb Channel was slow going, as we plowed through troughs and over breakers pushed high by the wind blowing along the length of the Channel. When we cleared the Channel, the going was slightly better, but the waves still pushed us strongly eastward. 

As we approached Terrace Point, I situated myself along the starboard bow with the pole, ready to push off once our 4 adventurers had departed. With a crunch, the bow struck the granite, and one after another, everyone leaped off onto the stone. I tried to push away from the rock, but the waves battered us from behind, and overpowered me. The depth here was great enough that we didn't need to raise the prop, and Justin tried desperately to reverse the boat, but the waves were just too much for our little craft. After only a minute or two, the boat had turned sideways and was being battered into the rocky shore as I tried desperately to shove against it with all my strength. Justin was forced to raise the prop and threw his hands off the wheel in defeat.Visions of our little boat disintegrating into a thousand pieces flooded my mind.

We weren't really in any danger - we had radios, we were at the shore, and help could easily arrive before the autumn chill would creep into our wet clothing. But I didn't want to see the Tip dashed to pieces, and I was partly afraid that it would be my fault, since I had been unable to push away from the shore in time. And it's a frightening feeling, knowing that this craft so carefully constructed by human hands can be so fully at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Fortunately, our crew of 4 standing helplessly on Terrace Point decided to be helpless no longer. Sacrificing the warmth and comfort of their dry boots, socks, and pants, they all jumped into the Lake and pushed. With the four of them pushing from below and me pushing from above with the pole, we finally got the boat turned completely around and pushed far enough away from the shore so Justin could lower the prop. He threw the boat in gear, and for a few moments we were stuck in a stasis as the forward momentum matched the momentum being hurled by the waves in the opposite direction, but then - freedom! I stood in the stern as we sped away from Terrace Point, watching my comrades crawl back onto the rock and wave goodbye, dripping from their water-stained pant legs.

Justin and I had a somber drive back to Bridge Bay, once again fighting the troughs and crests in West Thumb Channel. As we pulled into the protected waters of Bridge Bay, I think the tension was visible as it fell from our shoulders.

The crew left on the Lake had to hike with sodden clothes for the rest of that day, but were able to dry off in front of the wood stove of the backcountry cabin they stayed in for that night. I can't remember for certain, but I think we picked them up again at the same place a few days later. We were all a little gun-shy but the pickup came off without a hitch.

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Yellowstone Lake is cold all the time. Year round. If you fall into the water, you have an estimated 20 minutes to live before hypothermia kills you, probably less if you don't have a life jacket keeping you above water. Colorful signs plastered all over Bridge Bay, featuring a young man dangling lifelessly in the water, head rolled back onto the pad of his life jacket, reminded us of this fact constantly. One time, while staying at a cabin on an island in the South Arm, I got the bright idea (formed with the aid of whiskey) that we all should go jump into the Lake after dinner, since we had the nice wood stove and hot chocolate (with whiskey) to warm us up. We did. It was cold. 

Toward the end of the season as our field work was wrapping up, we all got the opportunity to join the bear trappers when they traveled to the eastern shore of the Lake to set some culvert traps. The huge, heavy culverts were already out in the field, but we needed to bring lots of supplies - bait (a lovely mixture of blood and guts of some kind, or kinds, of animals and fish), equipment for processing captured bears, as well as all of our overnight camping gear.

The day dawned cold, windy, and rainy. We all gathered at Bridge Bay and loaded up the Ursus. There were four or five of us from the research team accompanying the three-man crew of the capture team, plus all the added weight of our stuff. It took us quite a while to load up. When we left the dock, the Ursus teetered back and forth ponderously with each slight turn of the rudder in the still waters.

I think the Ursus and the Silvertip were about the same size, but there were some key differences. The Ursus was a bit flatter, more square-like in shape, while the Silvertip resembled more of the typical boat shape, with a sharper prow and more streamlined body. Because of the Ursus's squareness, it was definitely less stable when heavy. We discovered this the hard way.

Craig drove the boat out of Bridge Bay. As soon as we hit the West Thumb Channel, waves larger than any I had yet seen rolled before our eyes. Slowly, carefully, Craig did his best to steer in and out of the troughs of the confused waters. We in the back sat silently, trying not to panic as each wave rolled us back and forth. Spitting rain pelted the windshield, driven by the high winds into an icy stinging spray, and the waves reflected a murky grayness from the turbulent clouds scudding overhead. I found myself clinging to the person sitting next to me, fear written plainly in every feature of my face and every reaction of my body.

It became clear in ten or fifteen minutes that we could not make it to the eastern shore. The plans were abandoned. Craig carefully turned the boat around, and we headed back to Bridge Bay. I took a deep breath, probably the only one I'd really taken since we left the safety of the marina, feeling immensely relieved, even if I was disappointed that I wouldn't get to help catch a grizzly bear.

Craig decided to try to let the waves push him back into Bridge Bay, so as he steered toward it, he craned his body around to watch the waves rolling in behind him. I watched too from my seat on the port side, the rear of the cabin open to provide better visibility.

Without warning, all of us on the port side were thrown to starboard as the boat listed dangerously and nearly rolled. Craig's attention had been focused so completely on the waves behind us that he never noticed the huge one creeping up from the left. It felt like one of those rides at an amusement park where a huge ship (or, at Six Flags Houston, a space shuttle) swings back and forth, getting higher and higher with each swing until you feel like it's going to stop upside down and maybe, just maybe, complete a full revolution. For a few terrifying milliseconds, we were suspended in mid-air as the boat decided whether or not to roll completely.

Finally, it crashed back to port. I wasn't the only one panicking now, but we managed to keep a lid on it as Craig successfully led us back into the safety of Bridge Bay.

It was the last time I rode in the Ursus. I may have ridden in the Tip once or twice more before the season ended. I've only ridden in a boat once since I worked in Yellowstone - a short jaunt across a small lake in Colorado to sample some mountain lion data points - but it's definitely not something I miss. 

The cat came back - Part 2

Some of the details are fuzzy, since it's been two years; but somehow or other, we figured out that the lion had made her way back to the same exact culvert during the night.

We scanned for her kittens, but the GPS tag on the one wasn't working, and we couldn't pick up the VHF signal from the other. Our best guess was that Mama had lost her kittens after we released them, so she headed back to the last place she remembered seeing them - the recreation trail where they'd been caught the day before. My coworker and I drove to the Open Space land just to see if the kittens were there, and sure enough, the one with the VHF transmitter came in loud and clear. We drove back to the neighborhood with the news.

My boss and his assistant tried to figure out how best to handle the situation, and decided to first try to recapture the mother with the dart gun. I was asked to ride in the passenger seat of a wildlife game officer (aka conservation officer or wildlife manager, as they are known in other states) and be ready to chase the cat in case she made a run for it.

Here's a breakdown of the setting: the culvert was located on one of the banks on the edge of the bike trail/riparian stream area, where it dove under one of the roads, immediately abutting some backyard fences of the houses on the other side. The game officer and I were perched in the truck on the bike trail, which was on the other side of the creek, with a pretty good view of the culvert. Next to us ran another road, with more houses on the other side.

My boss approached the culvert, but evidently the lion remembered what had happened last time, and slunk out into the riparian area. The wildlife officer and I started driving parallel to her on the bike trail, as she crept along the fences across the creek. My boss hurried as close as he could behind her, waiting to get a good shot with the dart gun. From the truck, I could see everything perfectly, sitting on the edge of my seat as it all unfolded before my eyes.

It was the first (and, so far, only) time I'd ever seen a lion in motion, and words can't express what it was like. I could see her muscles contracting and expanding under her coat with every step, especially the ones in her shoulders and haunches. After a very short time, the lion decided she'd find better cover on the other side of the fence, and in a flash, she cleared the seven-foot wooden barrier with ease, disappearing on the other side.  We continued to parallel her as she moved through one backyard after another; every few seconds we'd see her leap the next fence separating one yard from the next. My boss kept up remarkably well, but never got a good shot.

I watched with worry as the lion approached a yard in which a large brown and white hound was barking his head off; I was afraid that I was about to watch a bloody fight begin. Fortunately, the barking seemed to deter the cat from continuing her trajectory; she turned into a sideyard and, from what we could tell, took off down the next street.

The wildlife officer and I, and our houndsman in a different truck who had waited at the culvert, quickly tried to locate her in the neighborhood, but it soon became clear that we had lost her. We could hear her signal, but it was obvious that she was on the move, and there really wouldn't be a good chance to dart her until she settled down somewhere.

We decided to go back to the Open Space land and try to find her kittens. In the meantime, my boss set up some cage traps back in the riparian area on the off chance that she returned in the evening. That done, we all headed to the field, stopping to pick up the hounds where they were being kenneled.

Each time I've joined on a chase with the hounds is a story in itself; it's one of the most exhausting things I've ever done. Typically it's done when there's fresh snow on the ground, so that the houndsman can find fresh cougar tracks for a starting point and know which way the cat was headed (since the hounds can sometimes follow a backtrail, moving further away from the cat). Usually we had three or four hounds, each one being "led" by a human, though it's usually the other way around, since they pull so hard when they're on the scent. Sometimes the houndsman would call to release them, and he'd follow them by monitoring their radio collars or listening to their baying. Mountain lions hate hounds: if they feel enough pressure, they'll run up a tree.

Another critical thing to know about hound chases: mountain lions like pretty rugged terrain, so if you're chasing them with hounds, prepare to be dragged up and down steep slopes, through thickets of prickly-pear cactus, and over rocky landslides with shifting, sliding pumpkin-sized stones or treacherous boulders the size of cars, all the while having your shoulder nearly ripped from its socket with each excited jerk of the leash. The excitement is contagious, however; there's something magical about the sound of a hound hot on the trail. And when the cat is treed, the sound changes, and no matter how hot the day or hard the trek, it always gives me goosebumps.

This particular hound chase was one of the shorter ones. We were in a canyon between two high hills. The eastern hill sloped steeply upward, ending in an impassable cliff at the top, which spanned the entire length of the hill, creeping higher until it ended in a rocky outcrop. Boulder fields dominated the hillsides, with juniper groves clinging to the flatter parts here and there.

(See picture below. I climbed the same hill again on another hound chase later in the season, and ended up following that cliff all the way to its knobby summit, where the cliffs finally revealed a small crevice from which people - and hounds - could get to the other side. When I got there, I was asked to go back down to the canyon bottom in case I needed to drive a truck out to pick everyone up somewhere further along the ridge, and when I turned around, I was absolutely shocked to see how high we had come.)

When everyone arrived in the canyon bottom, I was given the task of trying to pinpoint the signal of the kitten with the working VHF transmitter so the hounds would have a place to start. This is not an easy task in a canyon; the signal bounced off the steep hillsides, and I had to use every ounce of telemetry skill I could summon from the depths of my experience to produce the most accurate guess. After a few minutes, with my boss and a small crowd of other state employees waiting for me, I pointed up the hill and a little south, indicating a grove of juniper. The houndsman headed off with a dog or two, others followed with more, and the chase was on.

Armed with my telemetry equipment, I followed at a distance, hoping I had made the right guess and determined to provide the group with continual guidance as a) the kitten moved and b) I got higher up the hill and was better able to pinpoint the signal. As luck would have it, the dogs found the kitten's scent almost immediately and pulled off in the direction I had indicated. After only a matter of minutes, their excited barks changed - the cat was treed. I felt tremendously relieved that my telemetry guess had been right.

We were hoping the kittens had stayed together, and that we would find both in the same tree. If not, we hoped at least the treed kitten was the one with the non-working GPS transmitter, so we could still find the other one with VHF. Unfortunately, there was only one kitten in the tree, and it had the VHF tag. My boss's assistant darted it, someone climbed up to get it, and we hurried down the steep hill with it while the houndsman tried to refocus his dogs on finding the other kitten. I accompanied my boss back to the trucks, and while another group headed north along the hillside to try to find Kitten #2, I helped process the first one.

Unfortunately, we were unable to find the second kitten. It was starting to get late, so the hounds were called off. We had a bigger problem now - what to do about Mama.

As we pulled back into town, my field boss and I headed back into the neighborhood to see where she was while my boss, with the kitten in a cage trap in the back, met up with everyone else in a parking lot to rendezvous. Our cage traps had thus far been unsuccessful - whenever we trapped, each cage was fitted with a small radio transmitter that would emit a different signal if the trap door was closed. At this point, they were all still open.

As we searched for her, the bounce was terrible (since the neighborhood was near a rather large mesa), and we got lots of interference from houses, telephone lines, etc. We knew that she was in the neighborhood again, but couldn't pinpoint exactly where. After relaying this information to our boss, we decided to give her more time to go into the traps, while we stopped at a restaurant for some much-needed food and rest.

By this time, night had fallen completely. After maybe an hour and a half, we scanned for the trap signals again, and - success! One had been triggered. We quickly drove to the trap, and sure enough, there was Mama. My boss sedated her in the trap. When she was out, we carried her in the trap up out of the riparian area (me falling in the creek along the way as I struggled to help carry the 150-pound burden) and into the back of the truck, right next to her kitten.

Now this was one of my favorite memories from this experience: when the kitten had woken up inside the trap, he'd been a ball of growling, hissing fury, trying his best to look ferocious whenever we lifted the tarp to check on him. As we approached the truck, I could hear him start growling again, especially when the tarp was lifted so we could shove his trap over to make room for Mama. However, once she was in, and he looked over at her and got a good whiff, his demeanor changed entirely.

It was truly thrilling. I think his eyes actually widened, and he stopped growling immediately, never once moving his gaze away from her. As much as I wanted to stay and watch, we had to move out of the neighborhood and back to the Open Space land; but once we had covered them both with the tarp and gotten out of view, the kitten started calling to his mother.

It's a difficult sound to explain. I can liken it best to whistling - short, shrill whistles, not at all the sound you'd expect a cat to make. I drove with my boss in his truck, with the cats in the back. The entire drive up the highway, even through the sound of the engine, and the wind rushing past the open windows, I could hear the kitten whistling to his mother.

My part in this story is almost over. We decided to leave both Mom and Kitten in the same area they had been released before, but inside the traps, hoping that maybe the other kitten, if it was still in the area, would be drawn to the sound and smell of them. I can't remember why, but we had to wait for quite a while at the entrance to the canyon, all of us exhausted and silent as the autumn chill crept into the truck.

When we finally drove into the canyon, we stopped and carried them far from the road, filled the traps with straw and covered them with tarps to ward off cold and bad weather, and left them for the night. Early the next morning, having driven 1.5 hours back to Fort Collins the night before, we drove 1.5 hours back, picked up the hounds, and tried to find the other kitten. Unfortunately, we never did.

Mom and Kitten were then handed off to a wildlife officer and taken far, far away from the town and the Open Space land, to a place where, hopefully, they would stay out of trouble. After spending months getting to know this cat, seeing what she was eating, finding the interesting little treasures she left for me, I had to say goodbye.

I may have cried a little. But then, I had just had the most exhausting 2 days of my entire time on the lion project.

The cat came back - Part 1

The next time this lion crossed our radar was a more serious matter. Like I said, it made the news. I wasn't there for some of this story, so I may be fuzzy on the details, but I'll sum it up as best I can.

One day, while I was probably off somewhere around Boulder searching for more kill sites, my boss and his assistant got wind of our lion hanging out in someone's backyard in the same town where the unfortunate orange cat with the broken tooth met his demise. Apparently this lion waltzed right up to somebody's sliding glass door in broad daylight, let her two kittens (who were maybe 20-30 pounds by this time) play in full view of someone with a video camera, and then left to hang out around the bike trail/ravine.

I suppose I should say more about the location and the situation first. Yes, I believe this place is considered a suburb of Denver, but it is extremely close to some Open Space (public) parks, and lions could get there fairly easily by crossing only one major highway. Most of the time, our lion hung out in "safe" places, up in the hills west of the suburb, and only occasionally came into town to pick off domestic cats. As far as we could tell, she never posed a danger to humans; she came in at night, left before daylight, and sometimes actually did kill deer out in the woods like she was supposed to. We were never certain that she had kittens until they showed up on camera. This is one of those situations where an agency might be blamed for not taking action when they could have - we were monitoring her movements, yes, but it was clear that her behavior had not proven to be serious cause for alarm. Part of the reason I was hired, part of the reason we were doing this study on mountain lion eating habits, was to learn more about how they are adapting to humans. If a lion does attack or threaten a human - ever - it is taken very seriously, and as this story proves, our agency did pay attention when a lion's behavior took a turn for the more dangerous: for example, when they start taking their kittens for strolls in densely populated neighborhoods in the middle of the day.

Anyway, that same day (I think), my boss and his assistant headed to this town to capture the cat and her kittens, and move them back into Open Space land. I was not there for this. Evidently, the mother cat had holed herself up in a tiny culvert, and my boss was forced to walk within feet of her - confined in a very tight space - to dart her. I'm not sure how they caught the kittens, but I know they did; they replaced the mother's collar (which had been failing, if you remember), and also outfitted the kittens with some ear-tag transmitters; a pretty cool invention that lets us track the kittens without having to worry about them outgrowing their collars. One of the kittens had a VHF-only transmitter (which means we could only track the signal with traditional radio telemetry), and the other had a special transmitter that could actually collect and transmit GPS locations like a collar. I could be wrong, but I think this latter transmitter did NOT have a VHF signal associated with it, and it was sort of experimental.

After the animals were fully examined and outfitted with their new bling, they were taken to one of the Open Space lands far from the suburban town, where they were released. Releasing cats coming out of sedation is always tricky business, so we always try to find a spot where a groggy cat can stumble around without hurting itself, and spend the next week or so monitoring its activity closely to make sure everything is OK. Different scientists may do it differently; in my old job in California, we waited several hours with the bobcat in a cage trap, making sure it was entirely awake before we released it. Here, we couldn't always wait; the lions can hurt themselves if they're left in a cage trap too long, and also, in case you hadn't noticed, lions are a lot bigger and more dangerous than bobcats; thus, releasing a fully awake (and very annoyed) lion in close proximity to humans may not be the best idea. It is safe to say, however, that wildlife biologists try to do what is best for everyone involved - including the animals.

For some reason I feel like I may have been around for this, but I can't be sure - one of those tricky memory things where maybe I imagined myself there, when really I just heard it from someone else. Anyway, evidently the mother and kittens were released at the same time, but it's possible that they wandered off in different directions; regardless, the events of the next day seemed to indicate that something had gone awry.

Because the next day, Mama showed up in the same exact culvert, and her kittens were nowhere to be found.


Follow the link to the Story from the Denver news, or watch the video below from MSNBC.

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When the cougar comes to town

Literally. I may come to town occasionally, but I'm not sure I'm old enough to be classified as a cougar yet.

(By the way, I realize there has been quite a lag in storytelling. I'll try to spend more time here in future.)

Anyway, this is the story about an adult female cougar who liked to frequent a certain Denver suburb a little more often than was generally appreciated by the residents. One of my first experiences with this cat (a female, who shall remain unidentified) was when I hiked into that town to visit one of her GPS points. Her collar battery was getting low, which meant that sometimes her kills wouldn't appear as kills in the database, since they were only represented by a few GPS points instead of many (since her collar would have failed to successfully get as many satellite fixes). In addition, I must point out that smaller kills - like porcupines, raccoons, and the like - generally produce smaller clusters, or even single GPS points, since it doesn't take the lion long to eat the animal.

Because of these facts, I really had no idea what to expect as I approached this GPS cluster that had been randomly selected for me to visit that month. The cluster was located in the middle of this suburban town, along a recreational trail that wound through a heavily-populated neighborhood. Imagine two suburban streets lined by two-story houses, their backyards separated by this lovely bike trail: the fences of one row of houses made up one side of the trail, and on the other, a small creek ran, its banks teeming with willows, aspens, reeds, and tall grasses, then the rear fences of the other row of houses. Near where a bridge connected these two streets, spanning the bike trail and the vegetated riparian strip, lay the GPS cluster.

I parked my official truck on one of the streets and walked to the bridge, hopping down off the edge into the reeds and grasses on the other side of the creek from the bike trail. Technically, I was on public land, but I was keenly aware of the proximity of the properties located feet from me - aware of curious eyes that could be watching me from second-story windows. I didn't have long to hike through the brushy undergrowth before I arrived at the GPS cluster, and quickly identified clumps of thick orange fur clinging here and there. Amidst the carnage, I found the skull of a domestic cat.

Killing domestic cats wasn't a new thing for this cougar; she seemed to have a taste for them. I like cats just fine, and I'm sure that having your beloved pet get devoured by a wild animal is sad, but then again, it shouldn't come as a surprise when you live in cougar country and let your cat roam out of doors at night. As I examined the cat skull, I noticed that one of its upper canine teeth was broken off halfway. I figured it was a result of its being worked over by the teeth of its much larger cousin.

Occasionally, we like to collect some of the remains of kills to help train new technicians on identifying species, so I pulled out a plastic bag and inserted the skull and some orange fur. I filled out the data sheet for the site, gathered my few belongings and the plastic bag, and headed back to the bridge. As I turned the corner to get to my truck, I noticed a sign on a streetlamp that I hadn't noticed on the way in:

LOST CAT. [NAME REMOVED] MALE. ORANGE. MISSING HALF OF UPPER CANINE TOOTH.

Deciding not to call the number on the flyer and inform the owner that his or her cat was no more (after all, it had been 3-4 weeks since the cougar had actually done the deed - I'm sure the owner(s) no longer hoped to see that cat again), I did the next best thing: I pulled down the flyer, put it in the bag with the fur and skull, and presented it to my boss.

I'll admit we had a few laughs over it, but it became a humorous anecdote for my boss and his supervisor to add to the educational talks they gave about cougars: if you have a cat, and you live near the Front Range, don't let it out at night.

That's the first story. When the cat came back to town, it made the news.