The Girl and the Cougar of Ferndale
A peaceful encounter between a child and a wild animal in the forests near Ferndale highlights the proximity of wilderness to the early settlements.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Up on the Ferndale road a few days ago, a cougar visited the house of a farmer. The animal came right up to the door, which was open, and a little girl, who was alone in the house, saw it. She didn't know what kind of a beast it was, but the cougar blinked at her, and she says looked at a piece of bread she had in her hand. She threw it to the beast; it ate the bread, took another look at the child and quietly disappeared into the forest at the rear of the house. When her parents returned the child told her story, and an examination of the footprints showed them to be those of a large cougar.
“She threw it to the beast; it ate the bread, took another look at the child and quietly disappeared.”
Modern suburban sprawl has mostly pushed the cougars of the Skagit and Whatcom river valleys out of sight, yet this story captures the tension of life on the edge of the wild during the state's early development.
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