Louis Shalako

A cougar.

Chapter Nineteen

Cougar warning…

Puckhill, Ont.—Citizens of this rural village are on the lookout for a cougar after a horse was mauled at a nearby farm.

“The horse was mauled by an animal with sharp claws. Since the attack, which left the horse torn up and bleeding badly, there has been at least one cougar sighting,” according to Constable Doug Griffiths. “The horse has since been destroyed.”

While the animal survived the attack, veterinary advice to the owners indicated the horse would not recover. Police issued a warning in response to the incident. They are asking people not to walk alone, at night, or in the bush, and to secure their barns. The attack on the horse hasn’t been officially confirmed as a cougar attack.

“The injuries to the horse were consistent with the behaviour of a cougar hunting prey. It was traumatic. The wounds were made by one animal as opposed to a pack. That wouldn’t be consistent with wolves or coyotes. They hunt in packs.” Constable Griffiths said the risk to humans is low. “Normally, we see the loss of family pets, cats and dogs. But this is the first attack on a horse. The Puckhill area has become almost legendary for cougar sightings.”

Last summer a wildlife specialist with the Ministry of Natural Resources investigated 32 sightings in the London area, but found no hard evidence of a cougar. They did find proof of deer, coyotes, wild turkeys, raccoons, and possibly a bobcat.

“Cougars are also known as pumas. Or mountain lions, panthers, call them what you will. They roam remote areas all across the country, mostly in western Canada.”

Their presence has been confirmed in New Brunswick, Quebec and in western provinces. Officials concede the animal, once thought to be extinct in eastern Canada, probably roams the remote northern regions of Ontario. — Staff Writers

***

“Man, oh, man, I’d love to see a cougar in the wild.” Chuck told Big Frank. “So apparently Hilier was wearing water-proofed, insulated, lugged-sole assault clogs, like any candy-ass TV wildlife biologist should. Fuck. I guess it’s better than that A-hole Croc Hunter, going barefoot in the thorn and snake-infested, burning deserts of Australia.”

“What did Steve Irwin say when he got skewered by a stingray?” Asked his old man.

“Crikey, the buggah’s done me, keep rolling.” Soliloquized Bru. “Oh, and don’t forget to set up a foundation.”

His mimicry was precise, but he had been practicing for a couple of days now. Sooner or later it was bound to come up.

“The man engaged in high-risk behaviour patterns.” His old man agreed in his best and most scientific manner.

A lab technician to the end.

Holy fuck, he was pretty lucid all of a sudden.

What gives?

“I’d love to get a picture of a cougar someday.” Bru, with a funny look on his face.

Not getting any younger, there were a few things he wanted to do before he died.

That’s the feeling he’d had lately. It wasn’t exactly a life list. It was so much more impulsive than that. It wasn’t the proverbial bucket list.

Or maybe just some kind of a fuck-it list—

His pop’s eyebrows rose.

“Huh.” Pops seemed to accept it at face value, perhaps doubting the wisdom of going looking for one.

Chuck just grinned.

Brubaker went down to his room in the basement and looked at the big wall map hanging over his drawing table. While it was a road map, with little hydrographic or topographic detail, he knew his own backyard well enough. At the south end of Lake Kandechio, Lennox was lozenge-shaped with a triangular extension on the northeast corner. There was also a fan-shaped delta at the southwest corner where the St. Irene drained into Lake Goddawannapiss. In the sense of a microcosm of North America, the only things lacking were a set of glacial mountains like the Rockies, or perhaps a tidal seashore, or a desert. No tundra. Billiard-table flat for vast stretches, Lennox rose in the northeast into the dunes, and a few miles up the valley of the Shashawanaga, a few genuine hills, rolling into the horizon.

In this area, the Shashawanaga ran in a rocky gorge, Hungry Holler. Its side creeks and tributary streams had revealed a number of waterfalls to his wandering eye and itchy young feet.

“I wonder if he went up by Two Falls?” He murmured to no one in particular. “I guess we’ll never know.”

It was on the correct side of the river. He could never figure out that left bank, right bank, shit, which would seem to depend on which way you were looking at the time.

The river at Peggy’s Woods was quite narrow. This was a conservation area separate and distinct from The Pines, a provincial park. Upstream, at Hungry Holler, it was shallow. You could jump across from rock slab to rock slab, composed of fossil-laden limestone. At the Rocky Glen, which was downstream about a kilometre and a half, you could wade it, at least in summer. When it got narrower, only a few metres wide in places, you couldn’t find the bottom with your paddle, as he remembered.

And hot. One time he and Mush-Head brought a litre of juice, a can of pop and one canteen with a litre and half of water. Each. Oh—and a wine-skin full of Black Russians.

Plural—very much in the plural.

They had planned for a twenty-kilometre canoe trip downstream. The old two-vehicle trips, when you dropped a second car off downstream were the best. Otherwise you could paddle upstream for hours, and then when you’d had enough, drift back to the car in fifteen minutes. What they didn’t plan on was the 48-degree Humidex reading on that hot and sunny August day.

The learning curve could be steep sometimes.

Canoeing in Ontario...

He never made the same mistake twice if he could help it, though.

With low water levels, they were forced to drag and push the boat through bottom-grinding rapids and shallows dotted with rocks. Sometimes you could push the boat with your paddles. Sometimes you literally had to get out and walk, pulling it on a rope.

“My problem is that I need an adventure. No wife, no kids, no job, no home, no schedule, no responsibilities. No fucking complications. Why aren’t I happier?”

He was fascinated by the map, and by the possibilities. He and Mush had canoed the river, and camped in the hills beside a waterfall a few times. He knew that country like the back of his hand. Puckhill was a few miles up Puckhill Creek, another tributary of the Shashawanaga. While it was just a theory, his best guess was that someone killed Hilier, and cut him up with an axe or chainsaw. It was either that, or death by natural causes.

Perhaps a slip or a fall, and maybe something fed on the carcass.

Without any knowledge of the man’s personal life or circumstances, either seemed equally likely. On TV, the man wasn’t totally uncoordinated. That cleanly severed at the ankle, was suggestive. Bru couldn’t take his mind off of it. While he could be intuitive at times, it was never really clear-cut.

He just had a feeling. Maybe it was the fact that Professor Pakenham, a good friend, had disappeared as well. He just couldn’t shake it off.

Bru’s imagination was probably just working overtime. When he thought of Pop, sitting there hour after hour, day after day, watching the Cable News, with its litany of death and disaster, its obsession with terrorism, work-place and high school shootings, he guessed no one was immune from the paranoia. So far, all the police had was a foot, and maybe a big cat attack on a horse. Where was Hilier’s campsite? There were only so many good spots. Where was his equipment? A notepad, or a set of binoculars? A tripod and selfie-camera? And where was the rest of the body? A big cat would have left the head, and probably the intestines. It would have left some big bones. It would have left the pelvis, shoulder blades, maybe a few vertebrae.

He picked up the phone and dialed a number with some trepidation. To borrow a canoe just wasn’t that easy sometimes. If you weren’t careful you might get a passenger.

They might invite themselves to go along, and you wanted to be careful who you ended up carting around. Just as many people change when they get behind the wheel, a change comes over some individuals when you got them out into the real world and away from the eyes of their wives and mothers.

For some reason, their community standards weren’t very portable.

END