Brigitte Bowers: A suburban lion in winter?

In 1992, a billboard advertising lots for sale in my neighborhood declared that the area was a prime example of country living at its best.

What that meant, I suppose, was that residents could pretend that they were in the country, even though they were in a subdivision of 1-acre lots, because they were allowed to keep livestock on their property.

I had lived some of my childhood in the middle of the Stanislaus National Forest, 10 mountain miles from the nearest town, which had a population of 300. The 1-acre property my husband and I bought, a place that was about 2 miles from a city of almost 30,000, did not seem like country living to me, but it did seem far better than a remote home on the side of a mountain in the middle of a forest.

While I might dicker with my neighbors on the definition of “country,” I think we could at least agree on one point: The best in country living does suggest the exclusion of some undesirable things.

It means that a chicken ranch will not go in next door, that no one will build a Grade B dairy down the road, and that the guy across the street cannot turn his home into a strip club without someone noticing. And most importantly – and this last point has become critical in the past few days – good country living means an absence of the kinds of threats one might encounter in the actual, not-so-good country. It means no rattlesnakes or bears. And it absolutely means no mountain lions in my backyard.

So far, we have not had rattlers or bears. But a mountain lion has been prowling in my neighborhood, in the field right next to my house, where my backyard is home to two defenseless terriers, a third dog who is large but oafish, two lazy house cats, a potbellied pig who can barely move, and a goat who thinks he is tough but is no match for something large, hungry and clawed.

For the past week, every day when I put the dogs and cats out before leaving for work, I worry about what will be left of them when I return. At night, I go to sleep imagining the bloodcurdling growl that will alert me, too late, to the cougar’s presence in the goat pen.

I did not believe in the mountain lion at first because news of its existence was communicated through a neighborhood website. The site posts benign messages about eggs for sale and lost puppies, but we also get warnings about imminent dangers that turn out to be false alarms.

Not long ago, one such message advised us that a suspicious car was cruising in the area. It turned out that the car in question belonged to the newspaper deliverer, who was out at 4 a.m. because she was – big surprise – delivering papers.

When I read the message about the cougar, I told my husband that someone who had misplaced his/her glasses had mistaken an overfed tomcat for a lion. A few more rumors circulated – the cougar was spotted in an area about an eighth of a mile from my home, and then a nearby neighbor took a picture of a paw print on his property, a print that looked more canine than feline to me, and which was in any case too perfect for credibility.

And then another neighbor, a CHP officer, stopped by one evening to tell us the cougar had been seen in the field adjoining our backyard – twice. I am one of those people who tend to believe what cops tell me, and so I finally had to concede that there was a high probability that the sightings had not been a hoax or mistake, and that the mountain lion was indeed roaming the perimeters of my property.

“I just wanted to let you know because you have a teenager, and they are known to occasionally crawl out of their windows at night,” the officer said.

I imagined my son slinking across the lawn at 2 a.m., unaware of the feral animal hiding in our overgrown garden, its glittering eyes trained on him. I envisioned the leap, the bite to the throat. When my son got home, I passed along the officer’s warning. He pretended not to believe me, but I don’t think he’ll be sneaking out for a while.

My husband called from work this week to tell me he’d seen a message on Facebook debunking the paw-print snapshot on the grounds that the print had claws and cougar claws are retractable.

I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

It’s kind of exciting to think that I might encounter a mountain lion sunning itself on my front porch as I venture out to retrieve the mail on a Saturday afternoon. And if there is a cougar in the area, then maybe I really am living in the country, and not a humdrum subdivision, after all.

A cougar in my backyard, nibbling on the carcass of my potbellied pig, could be interpreted as evidence that I am a cowgirl in the West instead of a middle-class suburbanite living in a community of people who cannot discern a house cat from a lion.

So I hope the neighborhood cougar exists, and even that I see it with my own eyes.

I want to find it prowling the street, and have a moment when I see it, and it sees me – in that order – and we both stand suspended in time before the cougar decides to move along.

I like to imagine the lion will somehow, after our encounter, find its way back to the real country without intervention from the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

I don’t want proof that the lion is someone’s overfed house cat. As long as no one can prove otherwise, I have decided that there is a mountain lion in my neighborhood, in the field right next door, and that at night it watches my goat and pig, contemplating an attack.

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 9:15 PM with the headline "Brigitte Bowers: A suburban lion in winter?."