Just waved goodbye to kids as they climbed onto the school bus and was heading up the path, when I saw a cat cross the road into the undergrowth and head up the hill toward my cabina.
This wasn't your average moggy. It was brown and about two metres long from nose to end of tail, unmistakably a Mountain Lion or Puma*. I wasn't the only one who saw it, one of the local taxi drivers had stopped in the middle of the road and was pointing it out to his two passengers who both wearing a look which I can only describe as being a mixture of shock and awe. The taxi driver talked as if he saw them every day, while one of the passengers was cursing the fact that her camera was in the boot of the taxi (not that she would have had time to get a shot as the Puma shot across the road at speed.
I fully admit to walking the rest of the way back home with a degree of trepidation, not that a Puma would be interested in chewing on human flesh, it's more likely that it was after my neighbour's chickens - especially as one of the chickens has just delivered a clutch of cute, yellow, fluffy chicks - crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch...
*There six species of big cats in Costa Rica: Jaguar, Puma, Ocelot (Manigordo), Margay Cat (Caucel), Jaguarundi (León Breñero) and the Tigrillo (Oncilla). For more information - http://www.nicoyapeninsula.com/wildlife/wildcats.php
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