An exciting moment with the Teton Cougar Project – I was out for a routine hike checking a kill site of F51 but I couldn’t find anything… it was thick downfall and I started snooping around peaking into tunnels through the logs when I noticed 4 tiny breathing fur balls: cougar kittens! F51 had unexpectedly dropped four kittens and I found them when they were less than 3 days old. I took this short video on my phone – check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OdJ-Vj92KY&feature=youtu.be
Make sure the volume is up so you can hear them purring and doing this crazy coughing thing. Sorry about the text and low-quality but we had to do that for copyright reasons.
We were especially surprised by this discovery because F51 currently had a 10 month old kitten, Lucky. Normally the kittens don’t disperse and live on their own until they are 18 months old but apparently she kicked Lucky out early. We think she is too young to be killing deer so she must be living off grouse and snowshoe hare. Pretty crazy! We got a glimpse of Lucky yesterday and she looked a little skinny but quite healthy overall.
Natural Skills 