The mountain lion stalks him for minutes, circled the base, stared upwards, and growled for a few minutes and walked off.
This happened on the Giant Saguaro Cactus which is an enormous plant in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. It has two-inch spikes and is believed to be up to 300-years-old. Curt Fonger, a photographer who is 69, filmed what happened.
He said: ‘A friend called me at 7 am saying one of his workers had seen a bobcat being chased by a mountain lion.’
‘It ran across the road in front of his car and climbed up a large saguaro cactus at the roadside, with the lion hot on its tail.’ Even though the lion didn’t pursue the bobcat up the cactus it circled the base.
‘It looked up at the bobcat, growled several times, then turned around and trotted back up from where it had come.’ The mountain lion probably had cubs, She may have chased to warn the bobcat not to come close to her young family as the bobcat had intruded on its territory.
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‘I was astonished that the bobcat was on such a high prickly perch. In fact, the beautiful creature seemed quite content and was lying on top of the cactus. It only stood up when I got its attention.’ The bobcat stayed over six hours before finally deciding it was safe enough to come back down.
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Curt, from Gold Canyon, Arizona, said: ‘Although it may be common for a bobcat to escape one of its major predators, it is very uncommon to have witnessed such an event first hand. ‘I personally examined the base of the giant cactus after the bobcat had left. ‘There was no hair or blood – only claw marks.’
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‘It’s a success story of a bobcat avoided being eaten by a mountain lion with a happy ending of its successful exit back into the desert.’ The giant cactus germinates just one in 1,000 seeds and it is extremely rare. It takes up to ten years to grow one inch. Its first arm develops between the ages of 75 and 100 years old or about the time they reach 15ft.
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