A resident of the Park Sands Beach Resort in Parksville reported earlier this spring that a cougar had been hanging out underneath her trailer. The phone call was made the next day. The Conservation Officer Service, asked to comment, confirmed they received the report, then noted that the cougar had since left, no further reports came in, and so they were going to skip this one.

Now. I'm not saying anything. But it took the cougar one night to find the trailer, and it took the rest of us a full business day to find a phone. Make of that what you will.

The pattern with cougars in the Oceanside region is starting to harden. They show up. They assess your livestock. They assess your trailer skirting. They leave when they're good and ready. The rules for whether anyone has to do anything about it appear to require that the cougar either wave at a human or eat one. Anything in between is, and again I'm using the technical language here, "consistent with typical cougar predation behaviour."

I want to be clear: I have nothing personal against cougars. They live here. They were here first. I do find it interesting — and you have to wonder — that we have a designated provincial agency for wildlife and the recommended response to a cougar under your trailer is "did you check whether it left."

If I left a cougar under my deck for fourteen hours and then phoned it in, somebody at the front desk would consider that a goddamn lifestyle choice.

Stay alert under your own trailer.

— Grant Marlowe, Oceanside Tonight. If it has whiskers and it ate your sheep, that is not a customer service issue.