We were driving through the beautiful national park of Yosemite at night when the entire sierra Nevada range (white granite) was bathing in beautiful moonlight .White moonflowers which bloom only at night smiled in the meadows as we passed through them .My gaze was locked in the sky where I could see stars twinkling through the moon roof in the car. People around me were tired and were trying to either check the camera batteries or missing their loved ones.
Suddenly the car jerked to a sudden stop when the car beam fell on the sign board which had text in neon ink :
WARNING: Beware of mountain lion.
Hearing lion stories in the comfort of your warm bed from your grandparents is a totally different experience than to confront a sign board that warns you of its existence.
The brake lights at the back of our car glowed, we all sat silently for a moment deciding our next steps when we heard rumbling in the nearby area, it seemed so awfully close, one of us assured that it was just a wild deer for that matter and we were all making much ado about nothing. Though I must mention the voice of the speaker was hesitant to its very pitch, some assurance is better than none.
A look alike of Bambi jumped and off it went. Phew!!
We all giggled but suddenly there was a strange low shriekey sound ,it sounded as if someone or something was in pain , we all shushed up to hear better but the clarity in pain didn't help much as we just felt worse.
The big question was did we want to risk stepping out.
A ranger vehicle stopped as we had our emergency light's on .
He approached our car and saw 4 pair of doe eyes peering at him .We shared our concern , he looked unperturbed and said maybe it was a Bear. After all there must be reasons for calling California the bear country. He checked with us if we had any food in our car ?
The strong smell of garlic from my co-occupant‘s breath reminded of the pizza boxes in the boot of the car. He reminded of us the 1000$ littering fine and the fact that animals get attracted to food.
Even though words were not exchanged we knew we had to get rid of the food .We couldn’t find a bin so stopped at a campsite hoping to find a bin.
We all got out of the car looking for a bin. Unity in times of adversity helps .Trust me. But little did we realize that were walking with the bait .Probably smelled “ bait” for a carnivorous out there.
before we knew we had a :
A petit cat jumped in front of us and snarl.
A pal of mine who apparently had a source of light in her hand (a pencil cell powered laser) -our only source of light in the pitch dark forest…the camp lights had been extinguished and the clouds over the moon didn’t help either ,thumped loudly on the ground .
The cat was unperturbed .It looked at us. I threw the food in my hand in its direction .
“Please don’t feed animals “ was a sign we had read perhaps at every second turn in the national park and the monetary penalty stated with it but alas.
And then a volunteer wearing a hat with light fitted on it like the miners used to wear emerged from the corner and said :
“That’s the mountain lion folks, walk away it will do nothing.”
We didn’t know what stumped us more the volunteer appearing from nowhere, or the fact the “meow” creature in front was the much hyped mountain lion “Junglii billi “ my friends is called the Mountain lion in California.We all burst out laughing .
And I had to blog about it.
:)
