I'd been living on my own for quite a while, about nine months now. I was used to the sounds of the forest, and that low growling sound was familiar.
I carefully turned towards the noise. It was dark the back of the store. Except for two large glowing dots. Which were growling at me.
One of the rules when dealing with a mountain lion is to not make any sudden moves. And you wanted to appear as large as you can. You also don't want to make them feel trapped. A weapon is always a good thing to have too.
Except mine was on the bike.
I slowly unzipped my leather jacket, and grabbed the corners, moving them up above my head. I did this slowly, without any noise. That made me appear larger than I was, and I slowly backed towards the door.
The glowing eyes stayed where they were, but the low growling continued. But I still backed towards the door, towards the bike. I got to the door, and the eyes started to slowly move towards me. I got to the door, and closer to the bike. And the eyes, which I could now see were attached to a very large mountain lion, moved closer to me, growling a bit louder.
Mountain lions can leap about 25 feet in one bound. And that was about how far away it was from me. I was still moving towards the bike. I was within three feet of the bike (and my gun) when the lion jumped at me.
Although it is best to move slowly away from a hungry mountain lion, that rule doesn't apply when the lion is leaping towards you.
You know how they say that time slow down when you are in danger? At least, that's what I've always read.
Well, it's not true. Things happen very fast.
The lion was flying through the air right towards me. I quickly moved next to the bike, and I grabbed the rifle, swung the muzzle around to the direction of the cat, and fired. Several times. As I fired, I moved to my right. The lion had its claws extended, and one of them caught me on the shoulder, the other ripped into the seat of the bike. The lion tumbled over the bike, rolled a few times, and came to a stop. As it went over the bike, I swung the rifle towards it, and fired a few more shots.
The additional shots were not necessary. The lion twitched a few times, and then lay still. I still had my rifle pointed towards it. And part of me decided that it was probably a good time to take a breath; a big one first, then others one after another. I decided that breathing was good.
I looked at the lion crumpled on the ground, about five feet from my bike. Still holding the rifle, I grabbed my bottle of water and had a good long drink. That helped calm me down, a little bit anyway.
I checked the rifle, there were still some cartridges left in there, but I reloaded it anyway. As I did that, I recalled watching the old westerns on cable TV. You never noticed the cowboys reloading their guns after a shootout. I always thought that that would be important. You don't want to walk around with an empty gun. I guess that memory took over my actions, because I sure didn't want my rifle to be empty. Fully loaded is what I wanted.
I walked around the bike towards the lion, slowly of course. I looked at it carefully, looking for any movement. There was none. It's eyes were wide open, but they weren't looking at anything.
I carefully poked it with the end of the rifle; no response. And I kept breathing.
I went back to the bike, leaned up against it, and took another drink of water from my water bottle. It was pretty quiet, still the 'kree' of the hawk flying overhead, a few birds chirping (not as many as usual), but no other sounds.
Then I was reminded about the lion's claws and my shoulder. It's claws had ripped through my leather jacket on my left shoulder, scratching through my shirt onto my shoulder. There was quite a bit of blood. I took off my jacket (carefully) and my shirt. I used the shirt and some water from my water bottle to clean off the blood. The scratches didn't look very deep, but I would need to clean them out. I used the rest of the water and my shirt to clean it out as much as I could. Then I tied my shirt around the wound, and put on my jacket.
Then I sat there for about ten minutes, thinking about what had happened. And breathing, a bit easier than before. And thinking about the consequences of what had just happened.