A Mother's Love

Jeff

Jeff always enjoyed his morning runs and today was no exception. He had woken up early enough to make the thirty-minute drive to the trail he liked to run in the Whites and had just started his workout. The air smelled vaguely of pine and birds chirped happily. He could barely hear them over his music, but his eyes were extremely in tune to his surroundings. He was always looking down, making sure that he was avoiding roots and any squirrels who might dart into his path. He remembered the time he had tripped over a root and had landed flat on his stomach. It had taken him a solid ten minutes to start breathing normally again, and he had also cut his knee on a rock in the process. It was then that he started formalizing his rules of trail running and decided to start a running blog. Rule number one (and his first blog post) was about assessing the trail ahead of you. It was always easy to get lost in the scenery or his thoughts, so he constantly needed to remind himself of his golden rule. It helped that he used his runs to brainstorm for his blog. After all, how could he forget the day that had led him to where he was now?

He breathed in deeply and smiled. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it seemed like the perfect day for a picnic with his fiancé, Jackie. He made a mental note to suggest they go to the park once he got home. The image of her at bent down by the lake, trying to photograph a bee on a daisy popped into his head and he smiled. She loved taking pictures, especially of nature. He had always suggested she drive to the trail with him and take pictures while he ran, but he could never quite convince her. She said she didn’t like the woods and he had told her about all the birds and deer she was missing out on.

Kiernan

Crunching leaves. A flash of movement. A deer? Kiernan’s head swiveled to find the source and her eyes made out the vague outline of a large creature running towards her on two feet. She leapt away from her den and into the tall grass nearby to investigate. She had been sleeping, but she couldn’t fight the urge not to attack something that was moving into her territory, and at such a rapid speed too. After all, she had her cubs to think about. She raised her haunches and readied herself for a pounce. Suddenly her target stopped moving. Did he see her? Knowing it would be too late if she waited, she shook her rump and leapt out of her hiding spot.

Jeff

Jeff had been diligently looking at the ground when he saw the tall grass that flanked the trail ahead of him move. He was about ten feet away from the movement, but it was enough to startle him and make him to break stride. I’m breaking my second rule of running, he thought, it’s probably just a fat squirrel. He pulled out his phone and turned his running app off. He walked a little further and squinted, trying to see what was hiding in the grass. He always hated this part of the trail because it was the wilder part where the long grass would brush up against legs as he ran. Suddenly, a large animal jumped out of the grass and huge tawny paws pushed him to the ground, the claws digging into his chest. A cat-like creature loomed over him and he smacked the animal in the face. He managed to scramble to his feet and quickly spotted a large limb lying next to the trail. He wielded the limb and the cat retreated back into the grass, it’s long tail trailing behind it. He stared in disbelief. He had seen bobcats on his runs before, but this animal was much larger. The tail also haunted him. A mountain lion? he wondered. He slowly walked backwards away from where the cat had come from, wielding the limb in his hand the whole time. He could feel the ragged bark cutting into his hands but kept clutching the branch for fear that he was being stalked. He walked backwards for about five hundred feet until the tall grass that surrounded the trail began to fade away and he could see his surroundings better. Still hesitant to run and look like prey to any other animal, he turned around and walked with the stick still in his hand. He knew it would take him a while to reach the head of the trail at this pace, so he went to reach into his arm band to grab his phone and text Jackie that he was running late. Instead of grabbing his phone, he grabbed his arm.

“Shit!” he cursed out loud. He wasn’t going back to grab his phone, especially not now when the animal was active and ready to attack. He tried to pick up his pace, but his body was heavy.

When he finally got home at 11:30, Jackie’s car was in their driveway. He walked inside and found her sitting on the couch, playing on her phone.

“Oh, it’s about Goddamn time. I finished my errands an hour ago,” she said, hearing Jeff close the door. She turned around to face him and fell silent. She got up and ran over to him.

“Oh my God, what happened?” She put his face in her hands. His face was covered in dirt and the two almost parallel claw marks on his chest were bleeding.

“I think it was a mountain lion,” he said, pulling her in for a hug. Even though he had only been gone for four hours, had felt as though he had been wandering the woods for days. Being home felt both strange and comforting.

               “That’s impossible,” she said, pulling away enough to look in his eyes, “there aren’t mountain lions in New England. Are you sure it wasn’t a bobcat?”

               “It had a tail,” he said.

She pulled him in for another hug. “Whatever it is, we need to get you to a hospital. Did you get bit?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, “I think I got it off me before it could.”

“Okay, well we should go anyway.”

Kiernan

How dare he threaten her like that? Kiernan had never attacked a human before and was now realizing why. Humans weren’t like the deer she had been trained to hunt as a cub. They were smarter. They weren’t just prey; they were also predators. She had since retreated to her den about half a mile away where her two cubs were sleeping. She nuzzled them and they slowly woke and began to nurse. She closed her eyes, listening to the buzz of the flies that surrounded an old deer carcass in the corner of her den. She needed to hunt again, and soon. Her cubs were draining her of the nutrition she needed to survive.

Jeff

“A mountain lion? Impossible,” the doctor said after Jeff finished telling his story. “You know how many people go to the White Mountains all the time? There’d be way more sightings.”

“I’m telling you, this thing had a tail.”

The doctor paused. “In moments of trauma, we can block out certain details and create others in their place to try and make sense of the event. Mountain lions have been extinct in this area since the late 1800’s. Although these marks are pretty large. My guess is it was a large bobcat.”

Jeff shook his head in frustration and Jackie looked from him to the doctor.

“Haven’t there been sightings in the area though? Surely Jeff isn’t the only one who thinks he’s seen a mountain lion.”

“Oh sure, there’s been a few. But none of them have been verified. A lot of people confuse bobcats for mountain lions. We’ll fix you up though and get you some rabies shots in the process. Was the animal foaming at the mouth?”

“Not that I noticed,” Jeff said.

“Okay. Just to be safe, I’ll put in a call to NH Fish and Game about a potential rabid bobcat. They usually aren’t active past dawn and don’t normally attack people.”

“Yea-ow!” Jeff said as a nurse put hydrogen peroxide on his wounds.

“How would a sighting be verified?” Jackie asked.

“The state would need photographic evidence,” the doctor said.

Jeff looked at Jackie. “We should go back and get my phone,” he said, grabbing her hand. She squeezed his hand and he returned the squeeze when more peroxide was applied to his wounds.

The next day, Jackie looped her camera around her neck and tugged on her hiking boots. She had always been scared of the woods and knowing that Jeff had gotten attacked just the other day made her nervous. He had pointed out that he had been running early in the morning and that maybe the cat was about to go to sleep when he had disturbed it. Jackie was still wary and her fear was making her move slowly.

“Let’s go!” Jeff said, “We’ll be hiking in the dark if you keep going at this rate.”

“Okay, okay,” she said. She finished tying her shoes and stood up.  They both left the house and Jeff started the car and pulled out of the driveway.

“How long is the hike?” she asked

Jeff took a deep breath. “Well I normally run about eight miles out by the time I reach the place where I dropped my phone.”

“Jesus, we’re hiking 16 miles? No wonder you wanted to start at 10:30.”

“Yeah, and it’s 10:30 now. It’ll be eleven by the time we get there and it’s probably going to take us at least four to five hours to get there and back.”

“Jesus Christ, why do you run 16 miles?”

“You realize my marathon is in two weeks, right?”

“Fair point. But remind me why we’re doing this again?”

“To find my phone and hopefully get a picture of the mountain lion.”

“And what if this thing is rabid like the doctor thinks? What if it attacks us?”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said, nodding towards his glovebox. Jackie opened it, revealing a pistol.

“Jesus Christ, you’re gonna shoot the thing? Since when do you even own a gun?” She slammed the glovebox shut.

“Since my twentieth birthday,” he replied. He glanced over and saw the worry on her face. “And I haven’t used it since.”

Between Jackie stopping to drink water and take photos, it took them about two and a half hours to reach the part of the trail Jeff had lost his phone on. Thankfully it was laying on the trail in plain sight, and while the battery appeared to be dead, it didn’t seem to have sustained much damage over the past twenty-four hours.

Realizing that she was standing in the same spot where her fiancé had been attacked, Jackie tensed up.

“Let’s go,” she said, “I don’t see anything and I don’t want to.”

Jeff stood up, put his phone in his pocket, and swiveled around the trail. He saw a rocky outcropping in the distance and glanced movement on top of it.

“Hold on,” he said, “You see those rocks over there? Can you zoom in on them?”

Jackie slowly raised the camera to her eyes and zoomed in.

“Oh my God,” she said, bringing the frame into focus, “you’re right.” She snapped a few quick pictures and then checked them to make sure the resolution was okay.

“We got him,” she said, showing the picture to Jeff. She raised the camera to her eyes again, her fear suddenly replaced by awe of the magnificent cat. She zoomed in and saw a smaller tawny paw enter her frame. She watched as two cubs pranced over to their mother and the mother rolled from her stomach to her side to allow them to nurse.

“Make that a her,” she said, taking pictures of the whole family. “Do you see the cubs?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking over her shoulder. “She’s not rabid. She was trying to protect them.”

He glanced down at his chest and felt the gauze beneath his t-shirt. Jackie finished snapping photos of the nursing mother and they began their return hike. They stopped about half way back to have a snack on a boulder. While Jeff ate, Jackie un-looped her camera from her neck and reviewed her pictures, showing Jeff the better ones.

“This is insane. I bet NH Fish and Game is used to brushing off sightings as mountain lions that are just ‘passing through.’ The fact that she had cubs means that there needs to be a male somewhere around here too. There could be a whole population we don’t even know about,” Jackie said.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Jeff said, his hand grazing over his chest again. Jackie looked at him quizzically.

“That no one knows about them, you know.”

“I thought you wanted everyone to know you weren’t crazy?”

“I did, but seeing her with her cubs made me realize that she wasn’t out to get me. She was just protecting them. If we show the world these pictures, then people are going to get scared and some asshole hunter is going to try to kill her.”

Jackie leaned into him and wrapped her arms around him. “Is this a good time to tell you that I’m pregnant?” she said, breaking the silence.

“What?” Jeff said, a smile spreading across his face.

“I just got my bloodwork back on Friday,” she said, smiling. They hugged each other tightly.

“Are you telling me I made my pregnant girlfriend hike sixteen miles to take pictures of the mountain lion that attacked me?” he said, half pulling away.

Jackie smiled and winked. “It’ll be a good story when I want to make you look like an ass,” she said, kissing him.

“Let’s get you home then,” Jeff said, standing up and extending his hand to help Jackie up. “She needs to take care of her family and we need to take care of ours.”