January 2011. Where the wild things aren't... or are they?

Gather round the campfire, kiddies, for a tale of where the wild things are, but not like Maurice Sendak’s romp for children. Come hear a campfire story fit for darkness lit by flickering flames as shadows come alive, turning into stealthy shape shifters, huge cats prowling into our dreams. Listen—a distant spine-tingling scream fit for a soul possessed pierces the night. Is that shadow on the forest edge slinking? Could be we’ve worked up a case of hysterical heebie-jeebies; could be we’re in the presence of the almost mythical Eastern panther who’s too close for his or our comfort; could be experts are wrong to claim big cats don’t exist east of the Mississippi River but for a small Everglades breeding colony we overlooked in our purge of the rest, as we shrank the areas where they can exist to the size of a postage stamp.

A cat called many names, this creature crouched and watched from deep, dark primeval American forests 40,000 years ago when he was both hunted and worshipped by Paleolithic tribes who sketched his portrait on cave walls. His range included the entirety of North and South America. He warily witnessed explorers invade his hemisphere. Vespucci called him leon, and he became el tigre in South America as explorers tagged American cats with familiar feline names. As settlers and immigrants arrived in North America, the cat’s exposure to different cultures produced more names. He stubbornly refuses to answer to any name, but humans named him panther, cougar, mountain lion, puma, painter, wild cat, catamount, sneak cat, swamp screamer, king cat, and mountain devil. Though officially classified as Puma con color in 1993, areas of his range steadfastly cling to regional names. Southeasterners mostly call him panther, implying a big black cat, but the Florida panther, name of the family member we’d likely encounter, is a tawny, mountain lionish color. Now enough of names, let’s get to the animal.

This cool cat is a magnificent piece of work, a big one at that. Adult males weigh up to 150 pounds stretched out to a length of six to eight feet from tip of nose to tip of black tail tuft and stand two and a half feet at the shoulder. Females weigh but eighty pounds and are five to seven feet long with a shoulder height of just over two feet when they aren’t wearing high heels as do prowlers lately dubbed cougars (see Urban Dictionary if you’re clueless). Powerful long legs give the cats leap and pounce power, allowing them to jump twenty-three feet from complete standstill. The thick long tail serves as a rudder for an airborne cat who can also drop sixty-five feet from a limb sans injury since he’s mostly muscle and sinew, which don’t break easily. One source says an “entire dismantled [panther] skeleton would fit inside a hunting boot box.”

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