My neighbor is fascinated with wild cats. He is convinced that there is a local mountain lion among us in SW New Hampshire although the evidence for it is almost as sketchy as that of Sasquatch. It is possible but unlikely. So far, New Hampshire Fish and Game has not received credible evidence despite many sightings. Given the way other predators -fisher and coyote – have reclaimed/migrated into New England I wouldn’t be totally surprised if we do someday hear of a credible sighting. But for now, it seems unlikely that the woods are swarming with the big cats. Truth be told, I am as invested in there NOT being a big cat on my property (woe to my sheep) as my neighbor is invested in the myth that there is. Joe is a good guard llama but I am not sure what he would do if faced with a big cat.

Yesterday as we were talking over the fence, he told me a story. A couple days before, a large fawn had ended up hiding in the brush on his property. It came running like a bat out of hell from the woods minus his mother and stayed there for most of the day on high alert. No mother in sight for the rest of the day. Given that they have been frequent visitors together, it seemed odd. He may even have been the fawn I extracted from their fence a couple months ago.  The next day, there was a murder of crows raising holy hell near where the fawn had come out of the woods. My neighbor was pretty convinced, and not unreasonably so, that there was a deer carcass in the woods. I had noticed the the ruckus myself. Of course, he theorized that the take down was done by our big foot mountain lion. Evidence – no coyote howls and yips have been heard in days.

He then proceeded to comment that he heard my dog barking like a maniac – only furthering his theory that there had been a take down by a predator. “You know dogs can smell the kill and it drives them crazy.” I laughed out loud. Indeed, Rose was barking like a maniac. She has two things that send her into a barking frenzy – the sound of crows/blue jays and when she sees Jura herding sheep. Well, that day I moved some sheep without tucking her away from the windows AND there were murderous crows driving her batty. These events were concurrent. I remember thinking that I couldn’t decide who was louder – the crows or Rose. As I explained that Rose was just having a hissy fit because Jura was moving sheep, you could see his face falling. He reluctantly let go of this piece of “evidence” but he was still quite sure that a mountain lion was at work.

There is probably a deer carcass in the woods. A fawn without its mom is not a good sign. She might have broken a leg, succumbed to parasites, been ill and taken down by the coyotes (there is plenty of visual and auditory and scatological evidence of a large number of coyotes on my land). Given there are acres and acres of swampy tree filled land where the crows were making a fuss, I am not going to bother trying to find the evidence. I have seen deer skeletons before.

But my neighbor’s story reminds me how easy it is, as we try to make sense of the world, to weave “evidence” in that isn’t really evidence but rather coincidental. Our species seems to be driven by the desire to create a narrative  and gather evidence for our pet theory – even when there is none. And our biases can overwhelm our common sense or even considerable evidence to the contrary.

Recently there have been two videos circulating on the internet – one of a bear “saving” a crow out of water and one of a dog splashing water at a fish “saving it”. Despite the explanations of animal ethologists who see predatory behavior in both videos, some people continue to spin a different narrative. I see a bear pull a squirming thing from the water to eat it and then leave it  for other nearby food when the feathery, boney meal pecks him on the nose. I see a dog that is exhibiting a hoarding/burying behavior that many pet owners see every day. Others see noble creatures acting selflessly to the benefit of what would normally be their dinner. There are stories of predators that befriend species that are normally their prey. These two videos don’t seem to be in that class.

My neighbor wants a mountain lion. I suspect if we go and find a deer carcass, there will be a story we can reconstruct. It probably won’t include a mountain lion or a dog driven to frenzied barking by the “kill”. It probably does include an orphan fawn, a big fat meal for the coyotes and crows (regardless of how the doe ended up dead) and a dog who hates the sounds of crows. In a weird way, Rose’s barking is likely related to the death of a doe – just not as directly as my neighbor would have it.