This post was originally published in March of 2019, we’re re-sharing it today because it’s Amazon Prime Day, and you need a good thriller for the beach.

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In 2018,  we started a series called ‘Read With Me’ where we are sharing all most of what we’ve read each month in hopes you’ll follow suit and dust off that book you’ve been meaning to devour! Here are all the previous Read With Me posts.

I know, these book posts are usually Sarah’s domain, and she does a mighty good job of it. But as I mentioned in my 2019 resolution post, I did a bit of reading last year; I just wasn’t that good at sharing those books. I’m hoping to turn that around this year.

So, what’s my tally? books read: 2, books shared: about to be 1!

The Beast in the Garden

In total, it took me just a few weeks of bedtime reading to finish The Beast in the Garden. BUT that was after letting it sit on my bedside table for a year. The book opens with the grisly scene of a search party finding the body of a missing runner after he was attacked and killed by a mountain lion.

Knowing that Boulder (my current home) is the setting for this book, and that mountain lions regularly visit our hillside, that opening scene was a bit too much for me. After letting it marinate for a while, I finally got up the courage to start the book again, and I’m so glad that I did. This is a great read!

*To clarify – the runner is killed in Idaho Springs, CO, not Boulder. That just happens to be the culmination of the growing mountain lion population in the area.

Front Range Mountain Lions

This book’s focus is the return of mountain lions to the front range of Colorado (the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains), with a particular focus on events and people near the town of Boulder. This book is appealing on many levels: it’s part science/nature writing, part detective story, part sociology observations.

• science/nature writing : This book focuses on the “return” of the lions because for a long time in the US’s modern history, mountain lions were considered a nuisance species, and were hunted in vast numbers. But as cities expanded and deer populations grew, particularly in this area that borders wide expanses of untamed Rocky Mountain wilderness, the cat populations started to rebound.
• detective story : You get to follow along as the people of Boulder report large cat sightings, missing pets, and even personal observations of the cats. And in total, the data begins to reveal some unnerving changes in the cats’ behaviors.
• sociology observations : It’s so interesting to read about how residents responded to the lions during many different interactions with the lions. There are stories of close-encounters, not-so-close encounters, community meetings, and then the response of family, friends, and neighbors when Colorado experiences its first deadly mountain attack in recent history.

In the clip above, you can hear a 2004 Morning Edition interview with David Baron. There is also a website related to the book.  There you can see photographs of people, lions, and lion sightings mentioned in the book. And if you’re interested, there’s a longish video interview with the author where you can see some footage of the Boulder area, and plenty of photographs and video clips of lions.

Beyond Boulder

What I found interesting after reading this book and doing a little bit more research is that mountain lions are extending their territory east, well beyond the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Historically, mountain lions lived across the US from coast to coast, but hunting by early European settles wiped out the eastern cougar populations.

BUT rebounding western populations in conjunction with plentiful prey populations, mostly due to deer, is drawing the lions east. In 2011 a mountain lion was hit by a car in Connecticut. It’s believed that this is a male that traveled from a population of lions in South Dakota. Over the past decade, there have been increasing lion sightings in the midwest, and a 2015 study suggests that within the next couple of decades, there may be self-sustaining populations of cougars in the midwest.

As everyone is quick to point out, the chances of being attacked by a mountain lion are extremely small. Of course, a runner was just attacked in Colorado. ugh. But, just as we’ve celebrated the reintroduction of wolves, I hope we’ll begin to appreciate the role that this top predator plays in maintaining ecosystem health.

You’ll enjoy The Beast in the Garden if :

• You like nonfiction.
• You are curious about human nature.
• You like nature writing, especially an uplifting story of a species’ rebound.
• You are curious about these apex predators that we often only hear about in five minute snippets on the evening news.
• You like a heart-pumping real-life thriller of man & nature.

Wildlife Camera

The mountain lion photographs in this post were taken by our wildlife camera. Yes, THIS IS OUR BACKYARD! You can learn more about the camera I have and the other animals we’ve photographed in this post.

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Books I’m reading now :

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Winter World by Bernd Heinrich