Page:Babyhood of Wild Beasts.djvu/279

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BABY PUMAS
225

birds’ eggs he can lay his paws on. He hunts both day and night.

This big American cat has a good disposition and can be easily tamed; but if anything occurs in his early youth to sour his temper, he rarely becomes sweetened afterward. I know a Puma named "Mike," who seemed to love everybody in his youth, but an ogre in human shape burned his nose with a lighted match, and he has been embittered ever since. You can hardly blame him. I don’t.

The Puma is found from Canada to the straights of Magellan.

They are often called Couger, Panther and Mountain Lion.

They are well liked by the gauchos of the Argentine, who call them a name meaning "the friend of man."

They often follow people out of curiosity, but I know of no instance where they have attacked man. My father drove a heavy wagon drawn by two horses a distance of forty miles through the mountains one bright moonlight night. His des-