Cougar Trouble Irene Kull Loves Animals, But If She Gets A Hen-House Raiding Cougar In Her Sights, It’s Curtains For The Kitty

Irene Kull won’t leave her house at night without her rifle.

Her dachshund, Pounder, won’t leave the house at all.

Two weeks ago, a hungry cougar beheaded a pair of Kull’s chickens and killed the nesting peahen the 68-year-old great-grandmother kept at her rural home on Foothills Road.

“I’d heard the cougar earlier in the evening on the roof,” Kull says. “About 2:30 in the morning, I heard my peahen honking. I came out on the porch and saw the cougar dragging her down the hillside.

Until last month, Kull had two peacocks and the peahen, birds that she said are “better than watchdogs.” A car would drive up the road, she said, and all three of them would be on top of the house, honking like crazy.

“I used to have the prettiest weathervane in the county,” she says wistfully, pointing to the roof of the red shed next to her trailer, where one of the colorful males loved to roost.

The two peacocks disappeared mysteriously a month ago. Kull never saw a stray feather. Ironically, neighbors had been after Kull to get rid of the noisy birds. On Sept. 13, they complained to the county about the free-roaming creatures. Even in rural Spokane County, peacocks and peahens must be enclosed.

After a visit from county zoning enforcement officer Allan deLaubenfels, Kull says she had agreed to fence the remaining hen in.

“But she was nesting. You couldn’t get near her underneath the porch,” Kull says. “I was going to do it after she was done.”

The cougar got to her first, killing the bird and crushing four eggs in the process.

Cathy Barron, a neighbor whose 22-acre property is just down the slope from Kull, said she’s seen cougar tracks in the snow leading to the spot along Foothills Road where she feeds deer.

Barron said it isn’t unusual for a cougar’s scream to break the silence of a cold evening in the foothills of Mount Spokane. She has her own theories about Kull’s cougar.

“I’d imagine that it’s a young cougar who was kicked out by his mother and was looking for some easy food,” Barron said.

It’s no fluke that cougars are roaming the hills in the shadow of Mount Spokane. Deer, a cougar’s favorite meal, are plentiful in the area.

Deer hunting in these forested glades has been greatly reduced due to the area’s growing human population. In addition, every time a lot is cleared of timber, it creates perfect deer habitat.

And wherever deer numbers are up, cougar numbers jump as well, said state Department of Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Madonna Luers.

“We suspect the cougar population is slightly higher than in the past,” Luers said. “Because a cougar makes a point not to be seen, there are probably more of them out there than anybody could imagine.”

She said cougars that chronically raid hen houses - and peahen roosts - are often tranquilized and transported to a more remote area. In extreme cases in which a wild cat preys on livestock, officers will shoot the animals.

Irene Kull loves animals, from the moose that trampled her strawberry patch a couple summers back to the raccoon that payed a midnight visit to Kull’s porch to show off her three babies.

She even leaves food out for a stray cat that was abandoned near her home. The cat wanders the woods, but Kull won’t let it inside her home. She’s allergic to cats.

She figures she’s allergic to cougars, too. A rifle lies at the ready on her sofa.

“My daughter-in-law asked me if I wasn’t scared to live up here alone,” says the native Texan, who grew up shooting snakes on her father’s 18,000 acres near San Antonio. “My son said to her, ‘Are you crazy?’ My mom’s a dead shot.”’

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU MEET ONE… If you encounter a cougar in the wild, don’t run, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife advises. That triggers an instinctive chase reaction in the animal. Instead, face the cougar. Make yourself appear as large as possible. Yell and throw rocks. Try as hard as possible not to look like prey. Cougar sightings should be reported to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife at 456-4082.