CHAPTER SIX
When Reggie got home Thursday afternoon, he plopped down on the couch and watched one of the National Geographic shows about how animals disguise themselves—bugs that look like branches and squid that change their colors. When his mom got home, they chatted about their days over their usual beans and franks.
“Another good day at school today?” his Mom asked.
“Not too bad,” he answered, thinking how boring most of his classes were and how much he hated Algebra.
Then he remembered how Jennifer actually waved at him in the hallway, and she did it even in front of her girlfriends. “I like Biology, at least. Think I might get an A.”
“That would be great,” his mom said. “Oh! I only caught the tail end of it on the radio, but there was a story about a mountain lion shot in downtown Santa Monica this morning.”
Reggie perked up. “Whoa. In the city and not the mountains?”
“That’s what the news lady said. She was on a busy street talking to people who were around. Crazy, huh?”
“I’ll have to check it out online,” Reggie said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“Hey, you know we’re on for Skyping with dad Saturday night, right?”
Reggie nodded, “Yep!”
She continued, “You’re getting your report card Friday, right?”
And with a pause, she added: “Hopefully it’ll be better this time.” Reggie rolled his eyes. “Maybe.”
“We’ll have to tell him, you know,” she said. “He’ll be asking about Algebra. You know that will be the first thing out of his mouth.”
Reggie dropped his head and ground his teeth. “Fuck it, mom, that’s all he cares about. He doesn’t even care about who I am!”
“Reggie. Come on. Cool it.”
“No, Mom. I’m sick of it.” Then he kicked over a kitchen chair, stormed into his room, and slammed the door.
Later that evening, Reggie’s mom gently knocked on his door asking if they could talk. Through the door, he said: “Don’t you get it? I’m tired about talking about school.”
Sitting with his laptop on his bed, Reggie’s eyes glanced at the algebra homework sitting on his desk; all those stupid numbers and formulas waiting to be struggled with. His mind was pulled by something else, however, and he read every story he could find on the mountain lion killed in Santa Monica. He was surprised by the lion’s deadly journey, but he knew what had driven him. He almost felt like he was there, after he read what Joe Sartor said about the incident in one report. Joe has an intuitive feel for these animals, Reggie thought, but unlike his dad, Joe seemed to have a good feel for people too. Then Reggie remembered about the lion attack in Cupertino, so he Googled that and got a whole page of hits on California lion attacks.
Reading one Yahoo report, Reggie discovered it was a six-yearold boy who wandered away from a group of adult hikers when a lion jumped out of the bush and grabbed him by the head and started dragging him. The adults ran toward the boy shouting and the lion let the boy loose and ran away. The boy was okay physically, but thinking how scary that must have been, Reggie wondered if it would scar him mentally. The lion was later shot; a small sixty-five pound male juvenile.
The report puzzled Reggie, so he plugged in Joe’s website to see if he could learn more. He spent the next four and a half hours (when he should have been finishing that Algebra homework) glued to the screen, absorbing everything he could about Puma concolor. Along the way he discovered that sometimes juvenile lions have not been shown how to hunt by their mothers. He also learned how they captured their prey. So maybe this lion, Reggie thought, was a hungry lion, but a poor hunter. A lousy hunter like me, thinking that’s what his dad probably thought of him.
Reggie scrolled down to another lion attack story. This one occurred not far from his old home in the Los Angeles National Forest back in 1995. He read about a mountain biker heading down a trail who found a mountain lion running alongside his bike. He got off his bike to chase the lion away, but it bit at his tires and chased the biker down an embankment. The man fell down and the lion started biting at his head. The man picked up a rock and started hitting it, then threw more rocks at it and eventually the lion gave up and the two ran away in opposite directions.
Two days later, a 100-pound female lion was killed, a suspect in the attack based upon matching the lion’s tracks. Reggie wondered if the female possibly had cubs nearby and considered the biker a threat. Whatever the cause of the attack, that biker was both smart and lucky, Reggie thought. He remembered reading on Joe’s website that when you encounter a lion you should stand your ground and make yourself as loud and threatening as you can and if the lion should attack, fight back with all your might.
“Reggie!” he heard his mom yelling, “It’s getting late, have you finished your Algebra homework?”
“Yeah mom, I got it!” he yelled, knowing his dad would kill him if he flunked it. He remembered it was only two days away when he had to face his dad on the screen.
Screw him, he thought and read another lion attack story. This one made Reggie feel sick when he read it. It was about a woman high school guidance counselor from San Diego who was not so lucky. Hiking in a local park in 1994, the gruesome scene surrounding the attack and the wounds on her body suggested a struggle to the death. Two hikers found her saliva-soaked backpack, her knit cap, glasses and a human tooth lying near a puddle of blood on the road and notified the authorities. Local rangers and a county deputy searched the nearby brush and found the woman’s body; clothes torn off with distinct puncture wounds all over her back. The punctures were in sets of four and shaped in a box, indicating the four large canine teeth of a carnivore. Her scalp had been peeled back from the nape of her neck, which made the rangers believe she had been dragged by her head into the brush. Reggie could hardly read on, but the article finished by saying that park officials, federal hunters and local officers were quickly dispatched to find and kill the lion. That evening, they discovered the lion returning to the spot. They unleashed their tracking hounds and the 130-pound male lion was chased up a tree and shot.
Reggie’s stomach churned with the news and he couldn’t understand why the lion would attack that poor woman. He could find no answer, but he felt he could hear Joe’s voice when he mentioned how incredibly rare such attacks really are. He then thought about how people kill other people sometimes for no reason at all. His dad probably killed people in Iraq that he didn’t even know or know why he did. Reggie asked himself, why is everyone always at war?
Reggie then found a bunch of websites dealing with the relationship of Native Americans with the cougar, and he spent the next two hours immersed in Native lore. He became fascinated by how their relationship with the animal was so different than it is today. When he read about how the Cochimi Tribe of Baja, California believed the cougar had spiritual powers, he got really excited. He remembered his dad told him his Indian ancestors were originally from Baja. He used to talk about his Grandma Wanchuat who lived on an Indian reservation near San Diego when he was a kid. Surely, he thought, once his dad knew about this connection, he would be gung ho about him studying mountain lions. He loved nature too and these were his people; his dad would be excited about his new interest. Right?
As he researched, he signed up for a bunch of mountain lion and wildlife websites, discussion boards, and blogs, so he could keep up with what organizations and the public were saying. He thought Joe probably subscribed to all of these too. Maybe he could contact Joe and volunteer for his organization and somehow learn firsthand about the cougar. After another hour of reading, he went to bed and dreamt about the pictures he saw of the strange Native rock paintings of cougars and other animals.