The Cougar

Excited for a family camping trip this weekend Nick, Jean, Kat, Zach, Dax, and I headed North to Alturas Lake.  Five dogs, three mountain bikes, boat, and camping gear in tow we felt unstoppable for the weekend activities.  The first night quickly changed our minds.

The roar started innocently enough as we felt these cries where normal in the wild.  But after the third wake-up call at midnight Zach and I started to loose our collected parenting routine and felt confused, delirious, and desperate.  We only hoped other campers thought our child's crying was a cougar and not the freaked out 15 month old boy in our tent.  Rocking, shushing, singing, sleeping in our bags, more clothes, different hat, teddy bear, and a clean diaper didn't do it.  We couldn't calm the cougar.  In tears I begged to go home.  Zach in frustration yelled to keep it together when it was clearly too late.  Our camping cool was blown.

Not until Papa Nick showed up in his down coat, beanie, head lamp, and underwear did our little cougar's calls quite.  A midnight walk to look at the moon and stars calmed him before we could feed him a bottle of warm milk back to bed.  Alas, 4am came quickly and before we knew it the cougar was up again in a fit.  This time Zach took Dax over to Nick & Jeans tent where he quickly fell asleep once he was snuggled warm.

The morning after the cougar attack.  Milk from the bottle makes sense.

I felt like a failure as a parent when I realized our cougar was cold and kept waking up, then frightened, and frustrated from lack of sleep.  Surely he would be mad when he came around the next morning.  As if nothing happened he bounded out of Papa and Jeans tent and looked happy to see his bewildered parents sucking down coffee.  He darted to his toys and carried on in the dirt like the happy little toddler we love him to be.

Luckily, that next day made up for the nights events with a great mountain bike ride and leisure time by the lake.  But the camping crew was clearly defeated and we made a unanimous decision to head back to town that night.

Happy cougar

Lesson learned:  If the cougar is happy so is everyone else.