The Puma

It was a good day. Not too hot, not too cold. Some nice sun and a cool breeze. I was in the middle of a Clean Sweep(tm) to prepare for the Brown Couch garage sale this weekend. Going through old boxes, reliving the past, and realizing that I could part with things that used to be important. (Except for that picture of me as a sophomore in high school...I didn't even recognize myself...man that kid was thin...yeah, we're keeping that as proof.)

But I digress. The cleaning was going well. I had just picked up a lamp and was carrying it to the garage. The shade fell off. I bent down to pick it up, and continued my walk to the garage, looking at the fixture, trying to put the shade back on. I unlocked the padlock on the door and swung it open. It was cool and dark. Kind of like a scary cave. Not seeing the point of going much farther into the cavernous blakness, I gave up with the lamp. I placed it on the shelf inside the door and turned to exit.

I should tell you that my garage door is currently broken. One side is completely off the track, so to open the door, one must actually lift the door with sheer force, while someone else pushes the button. (This was all before I knew of a little thing called a release cord, but that's neither here nor there.) The last time I used the door, I couldn't get it to touch the ground. So one corner of the door is still about a foot from the ground. But it's impossible to open from the outside, and homeless people, last time I checked, had bones, so the good would all be safe, even with the door partially compromised.

This is what I thought as I turned to go. Then I heard the sound. I quickly turned, my eyes only slightly adjusted to the darkness. And that's when I saw it. The large black animal walking on top of one of the many sofas housed in the garage.

I screamed and ran back to my deck.

A little later, I grew bold and took a handful of metal shelf brackets to try and scare the creature. I approached the door and threw the pile into the doorway. They greeted the creature with a meager *crash*. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. I poked my head around the corner. I saw a flash and heard a growl.

Again, I screamed and ran back to the house, this time through the side door. I spent a few precious moments trying to close the door behind me, but I had blocked it open for cleaning ease. I sprinted up the stairs and slammed the stairwell door behind me, all the while sure that the creature had followed me and was standing on the other side of a two-inch thick piece of plywood, salivating, imagining the taste of my frightened blood on its lips.

They can smell fear, you know.

I'm speaking of course of pumas, which, at that point, I was sure was currently plotting its attack.

After several phone calls to friends and my landlord who were all but worthless in animal removal techniques, I called professionals. Their answering service was very friendly, but couldn't help me at all. Nice.

I was immediately transported back to my younger years, younger even than the deceptively skinny child in the headshot found in the old box. It was Halloween, 1982. I sat on the carpeted risers in my kindergarten library, eagerly anticipating the scary story that was surely coming. The librarian was a kindly old woman, with sensible shoes and a prediliction to green plaid. There was no way she could scare me.

Oh but she did. In that expressive voice that only librarians posess, she told us the tale of Talypo.

A man had build a log cabin all by himself. He was proud. It was hard work. It was his first night sleeping in the cabin, and he decided to make some stew. He put the pot on the fire and began to entertain himself by whittling, a completely normal activity in those times. (If you told me to whittle now, I might laugh in your face, but I'm sure he was having a good time.)

All of a sudden a huge, hairy, black tail stuck through the slats of the cabin. You know, six, seven feet long. Like any prepared huntsman/former boy scout with a whittling knife, he cut the tail off and put it in his stew. (Of course that's what you would do. Cabins are totally safe. They're like Fort Knox almost. There's no way anything could get angry about the loss of its tail and come after you.)

The man finished his whittling and ate the stew. Then he went to bed. Minutes after he turned off his trusty lantern, he heard a wind blow.

"Talypo, talypo...who's got my talypo?"

Being the type of macho guy that would build a cabin and sleep in it alone, after cutting a large tail from some sort of creature that was lurking outside of his house and eating it, he ignored the voice and rolled over.

He heard it again. Closer this time.

"Talypo, talypo...who's got my talypo?"

And then on the front stoop of the cabin.

"Talypo, talypo...who's got my talypo?"

By now, even the bravest of boy scouts might start to get a little nervous. He sat up in his bed as he heard the door squeak open. He wished that he had thought to put a deadbolt on that thing.

It was in the next room. "Talypo, talypo...who's got my talypo?"

And closer...it came into the bedroom...at the foot of the bed.

"Talypo, talypo...who's got my talypo?"

The man, finally appropriately frightened turned on his lantern. "YOU'VE GOT IT!"

And in the second before he was mauled to death and eaten, in the light of the newly lit flamr, the man saw a gigantic black hairy creature, bigger than any wolf or coyote could possibly be, standing as tall as a man, but with menacing yellow eyes and razor sharp teeth. He watched in horror as the claws attacked in search of the precious talypo.

Remember books in kindergarten? Remember how pretty all the pictures were? This was a picture book. Complete with gigantic black, hairy beast with claws at the foot of the frightened man's bed.

I slept with the light on for a week.

And I know it's lame, but sometimes I remember again, and maybe leave a lamp on.

All of this came rushing back as the puma lay on the other side of my door, waiting to kill me.

Somehow, I managed to summon up the courage to go back outside. I fretted on the deck for a while, until I couldn't take it any more. I grabbed a bamboo pole and went back to the garage. I reached for the door and notched the end of the pole in the handle. Then I swung the door closed. Then I put the padlock back on. Then I ran around my backyard throwing all of the junk back in the storage room. Then I made a drink.

As I looked out over the yard, I realized that I had an entire whildlife preserve in my backyard. Four rabbits lay in the grass at different corners of the yard. Bob the rat was somewhere, I'm sure, making trouble as he is wont to do. A pretty redbird flew up to the birdhouse in the back corner of the yard, where I had never noticed it before. The next day, LIJ also saw a big white opossum walking around. I thought this was Chicago, not a state park.

LIJ also saw a big gray cat run across our yard and jump up on the fence. The puma looked back at my roommate and jumped into the next yard, never to be seen again.

Really the only non-emasculating thing about the whole experience is the fact that when confronted with fear, I found that I don't scream like a girl.