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Updated: June 24, 2025
The Indians at first thought it all a trick of their priest, who was so anxious to involve them in a conflict with the pumas, and standing at a distance they began jeering at him, and exclaiming that he had found the animal dead!
To that end "Buffalo" Jones was sent out by the Government to find and destroy the intolerable surplus of pumas. In the course of his campaign he killed about forty, much to the benefit of the elk herds. Around the entrance to the den of a big old male puma, Mr. Jones found the skulls and other remains of nine elk calves that "the old Tom" had killed and carried there.
Pumas and lynxes attack and kill mountain sheep; and the golden eagle is very partial to mountain sheep lambs and mountain goat kids. It will not answer to permit birds of that bold and predatory species to become too numerous in mountains inhabited by goats and sheep; and the fewer the mountain lions the better, for they, like the lynx and eagle, have nothing to live upon save the game.
We could not distinguish one from the other; but the Indians, by listening attentively, caught the voices of those which sounded for an instant at intervals while the rest ceased. Among the strange cries were those of the sapajous, the moans of the alouati monkeys, the howlings of jaguars and pumas, the shrieks and grunts of peccaries, the calls of the curassow, the paraka, and other fowls.
The deer which had fled from the pool at the last moment they, I knew, must have been overtaken in that first terrible rush of the flames; and I wondered what the chances were that the bears who had declined to stay with us, the squirrels, the coyote, the pumas, and the hosts of birds that had been hurrying eastward all day, would be able to keep moving long enough to save themselves.
Naturalists have thought it strange that the horse, once common throughout America, should have become extinct over a continent apparently so well suited to it and where it now multiplies so greatly. As a fact wherever pumas abound the wild horse of the present time, introduced from Europe, can hardly maintain its existence.
Any carcass left in a neighborhood where Pumas are known to exist is sure to attract them, and day after day its bulk will be found to decrease until the bones only remain. By thus "baiting" a certain place and drawing the Pumas thither, the way is paved for their most certain destruction. The gun-trap is very simply constructed, and may be put in working order in a very few moments.
Having performed our unpleasant operation, we went down to the river to wash our hands, while Tim and the black beat the surface to scare away any alligators which might be prowling about. On our return to the camp we once more lay down, one of the party as before keeping watch; which was more than ever necessary, as the dead tapirs were very likely to attract either jaguars or pumas.
Jaguars and Pumas, which you read of in Captain Mayne Reid's books, are cats, and so are the Ocelots or tiger cats. Oh, I saw them at the Zoological Gardens. But no one would bring them over, I should think, except to put them in the Zoo. Not unless they were very foolish. And much stronger and cleverer than the savages of South America.
There is an entrance to it from the southeast, an open corridor flanked by similar parapets. The enclosing wall is not more than three feet high, and we easily peep into the interior. Inside there are two statues carved out of the living rock. Although much disfigured to-day they still show a plain resemblance to the figures of two crouching panthers or pumas.
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