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METALINE – There were two cougars lethally removed – killed – last week after killing goats and a pig in the separate incidents in northern Pend Oreille County.
Pend Oreille County commissioner Brian Smiley said he lost two goats Saturday.
“We went outside and one was gone,” Smiley said. “As we were out looking for it, the cougar came back and got a second goat.”
Also on Saturday, Smiley’s nephew, Silas Dahlin, lost a pig to a cougar. Dahlin lost a wiener pig about three weeks earlier, but he didn’t know what killed it. He didn’t know whether it was a cougar or eagle.
“So I had a cell camera set up,” he said. Early Saturday morning, about 2 a.m., he got a message on his cell phone. When he checked the pigs at 5 a.m., he found he only had one left.
He called Washington Department of Fish and Game officer Severin Erickson, who contacted a houndsman and went looking for the cat. They had treed the animal about 11 a.m., not a quarter mile away.
“A local houndsman and I responded and lethally removed an adult male cougar that was located just a couple hundred yards from the pig pen,” Erickson said. “The pen was surrounded with electric web style fencing that stood about 3 to 3 ½ foot high and the cougar jumped it to get to the pig.”
The cat that was killed was an adult male, Dahlin said. He said that he has lived around cougars for years but this was the first time he lost livestock. He only had three pigs to begin with, now he has one.
Dahlin said Erickson told him that weather seems to have something to do with cougar attacks.
The pigs were right in Tiger, he said, not in a remote area. The cougar apparently wasn’t afraid. Dahlin said he had dogs that were barking but apparently that didn’t bother the cougar.
Dahlin was irked he couldn’t keep the pelt, apparently an administrative decision by WDFW. He also wanted to eat the cat.
“They used to give you the animal,” he said. In Smiley’s case later that day, Saturday, after he lost the second goat, he looked around to see if he could find any tracks. He did find one and called Erickson, who confirmed it was a cougar track.
The next day the houndsman came and they got the cat.
Erickson said it was unusual to have two incidents the same day by different cougars.
“They were two completely separate incidents, in two different locations, involving two different cougars, all on the same day,” he said. “I know that’s kinda strange since we don’t get these confirmed depredations all that often then to have two on same day but that was the case here.”
Dahlin said the loss of livestock was troubling. He figures he lost about $300 worth of pigs. But he also has three children under 5 years of age who love to explore. That concerns him more, he says.
