By Katherine Weadley

Redstone Review

LYONS – Two mountain lion kittens were rescued from under a Lyons deck from probable starvation on Christmas Eve day by the Department of Wildlife (DOW). On the Friday before Christmas Kathy Ralston heard banging on their porch window and went to investigate. Surprisingly it was a young mountain lion cub standing up on its hind legs trying to get into their house. Later, she and her husband Dick, saw two mountain lion kittens on their deck. They immediately called the Colorado Department of Wildlife, DOW.

According to Wildlife Manager Kristin Cannon, the mountain lions were seven to eight months old and weighed about 40 to 50 pounds. “They still call them kittens,” laughed Dick. The Ralstons, who live in Eagle Canyon, are bird lovers. They have a lot of bird feeders on their property which backs to Boulder County Open Space and Steamboat Mountain. According to Dick the bird feeders attract mice from the fallen bird food. “We think the kittens had been living off the mice under our deck for some time,” he said.

Cannon determined the kittens to be orphans. “They spent a lot of time walking the boulder fields looking for large prints in the snow. They didn’t find any. They only found the kitten prints,” Dick said.

The kittens also killed a skunk under the Ralston’s deck. “That’s how desperate they were. They killed a skunk,” said Dick. The dead skunk remains under their deck. “I’m not crawling under my deck to get out a dead skunk,” he said.

The DOW thought that the kittens might drink from a water feature in the Ralston’s back yard so they set up a night camera in hopes of capturing the kittens on film. However, it snowed heavily that night and the kittens weren’t seen on camera. The DOW’s next plan of action was to bring out live traps.

Finally on Christmas Eve day Cannon saw the kittens under the deck and called in another officer. All the officers were busy except for Wildlife Manager Fred Quartarone, it was his last day of work before retiring. Cannon took a deer leg from one of the live traps and threw it under the deck hoping to keep the kittens in place until Quartarone could arrive. When he arrived they spent the next three hours in three degree weather crawling deep under the Ralston’s deck in hopes of capturing the kittens.

Finally, after three hours both kittens were caught with live snares and moved into a live trap. The DOW officers put a tarp over the kittens in the back of their pick-up truck and drove them to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Ft. Collins.

The Ralstons were informed the first week of January that one of the kittens had died. “We don’t know which one died. We never even knew if they were girls or boys,” said Dick. “They hope to release the surviving kitten into the wild this spring once it has been rehabilitated.”

This wasn’t the first time the Ralstons had a mountain lion trying to get in their house. About five years ago their cat came running through their cat door. Kathy Ralston went to see what was happening and opened the porch door. Standing there was a mountain lion. “It was a big cat,” said Dick. “Kathy told it ‘Get out of here!’ and it left,” he said.

The Ralston’s were impressed with both Cannon and Quartarone. “They did a really good job. It was really impressive to find that they took care of the animals.”

Katherine Weadley is a freelance writer and was part of the Boulder Daily Camera newsroom staff for four years. She has a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Denver and used to work at the University of Colorado as a social sciences and humanities reference librarian. She lives in Lyons with her husband, two sons and her dog Winter and new puppy.

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