This made me lol and think about the time I spent as a volunteer caretaker for a mountain lion https://twitter.com/instasamer/status/1283457025180147712

I don’t know what the context behind this photo is - whether it was taken in the wild, a sanctuary or a zoo. But encounters with mountain lions in the wild are extremely rare. So I’m awestruck by the photographer’s amazing stroke of luck if they stumbled upon this by chance.

The mountain lion I worked with was named Sasha. She was sold to an (idiot) oil tycoon when she was a cub. When she reached her adult size, he realized having a giant cat destroying and urinating on everything in his home wasn’t everything he dreamed it would be.

Fortunately, he had the good sense to do right by her and contacted a qualified sanctuary that could care for her during her remaining years. That’s how I, a nerdy animal-loving volunteer at Sarvey Wildlife, came to meet Sasha while I was just a teenager.

Sasha was still pretty new to the sanctuary when I started volunteering there. One of my first duties as a volunteer was to help build her a new enclosure. This was done by building around her existing space and put me in close proximity to her for hours at a time.

I’ve seen multiple sources state that cats aren’t really vocal in the wild and only talk as an adaptation to life with humans. I don’t know if this applies to big cats too but I can tell you that Sasha was quite the talker.

It’s hard to explain the sound a happy mountain lion makes. Just like house cats, they purr - although it’s much louder and richer. But they also make this really cute vocalization that’s somewhere between a bark and a meow.

It’s very easy to mimic and Sasha seemed to delight in having back and forth conversations with me. It never seemed to be in a response to a need - like the way a house cat will meow for food. Rather it just seemed to be her way of receiving and bestowing affectionate attention.

Now, ordinarily, this level of interaction with an animal at a wildlife sanctuary would be a HUGE no-no. It puts the animals at risk of becoming habituated, too reliant upon humans, and then they can’t be released back into the wild.

But, due to Sasha’s circumstances, sadly, she was already too tame for that to ever be an option. At other wildlife sanctuaries I’ve volunteered at since, if an animal begins to demonstrate it feels overly comfy with humans, it is euthanized. Working with Sasha was very unique.

Once Sasha’s new enclosure was complete, my volunteer duties shifted back to feeding and rehabilitating the wildlife. And because I had spent so much time bonding with Sasha from outside her cage, it was only a matter of time before I was assigned to care for her.

Previously, the scariest animals I’d ever worked with were protective mother opossums who practically unhinged their jaws to hiss at me when I opened their cage to replenish their food and water.

The rest of my rounds were much less scary: adolescent bobcats who tried to snuggle/dominate anything warm that entered their enclosure, baby birds, injured raptors, young wayward river otters, coyotes I knew existed but never actually saw.

I liked building a relationship with Sasha. From outside her enclosure. The idea of being INSIDE with her was low-key terrifying. Sure, she was relatively tame but there was still a lot of wild in her.

Back in the days when the sanctuary still offered tours, small classes of children would visit. Sasha would go into full predator-mode and stalk them as they paraded past the fence of her enclosure.

I practically peed my pants the first time I there wasn't a fence between us. An older volunteer went in with me to show me the ropes. But the thing about wildlife centers is everything moves FAST. They need a lot of help and you are expected to be very independent once trained.

Even as a teenager, when I was at the height of feeling immortal, I always felt keenly aware of that cat's ability to snap me in half and disembowel me in the span of three seconds. The size of a mountain lion's paws alone would make a grown man feel small.

It's an odd feeling. To feel so in awe and yet so scared. To pet something that could separate you from your hand in one chomp. I both dreaded and loved working with Sasha in equal measure.

Most encounters with her were relatively uneventful. She'd do her little call-and-response clucking sound and forcefully nuzzle me for pets. It was mostly magical. Mostly.

Just like a person, she had good days and bad days. I couldn't blame her. Nature never intended for her to spend her life in a cage. Sometimes I wondered if euthanasia would have been more humane.

On grumpy days, she would revert to wanting her space. In the wild, mountain lions are solitary. At the sanctuary, Sasha was forced to share her space during feedings and cage cleanings or whenever someone needed to pass her enclosure on the way from point A to point B.

On playful days, she would toss around large items like tires or rubber buoys and zoom around. These were the scariest times to be around her. She always tried to be gentle but she was just too big. I know multiple volunteers who have scars from Sasha jumping up on them.

It never kept us from going back in the next day. But it did regularly remind us that we weren't at the top of the food chain in Sasha's world.

I moved from the small town near the sanctuary after I left high school but I still went back to visit Sasha whenever I could. Eventually, the sanctuary (wisely) stopped granting tours. I was heartbroken that I'd never get to see her again or say goodbye.

Sasha lived a long life and was loved by many before succumbing to old age at the same sanctuary where we first met. I think about her almost every day. We aren't worthy of sharing the earth with animals.

The pandemic has made it really hard for sanctuaries like Sarvey, where Sasha lived, to continue covering the costs of caring for their patients. If you've read this far and are fortunate enough to have a spare dollar, please donate to your local wildlife sanctuary.

Or donate to Sarvey or PAWS (where I volunteered in the baby bird nursery pre-Covid)
Sarvey: http://sarveywildlife.org 
PAWS: http://paws.org/wildlife