Path of the Panther

8/4/2019 Path of the Panther

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Path of the Panther

How the New World was Re-made

Archie Carr III



Path of the Panther

How the New World was Re-made

Archie Carr III

In the 1990s, working for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), I directed a regional conservation initiative for Central America that we called the

Paseo Pantera , or Path of the Panther in English. The key premise of the program

was that the seven small countries of Central America might have more successwith wildlife conservation if they found a way to link their scattered protected

areas together with biological corridors; pathways for genetic transfer between

one national park and another. By forming a network of this sort up and down thelong, skinny isthmus, the parks of the area would become mutually reinforcing,

and the plant and animal life they contained might have a greater chance of

survival over the long haul. The Pantera , wandering back and forth, from Panamato Guatemala, would become the icon of this novel, multinational corridor system.

Conveniently, the geological and paleontological history of Central Americahad already provided us with one of the planet’s most dramatic illustrations of a

biological corridor. Roughly 3 million years ago, in the late Pliocene era, a long,

tectonically-tortured, geological process involving a complex sequence movementsof crustal plates and associated volcanism resulted in the emergence of the Central

American Land Bridge, a terrestrial link between the North and South Americancontinents. For 60 million years, the enormous land mass which would becomeknown as “South America” had shifted about in the southern ocean, developing a

fauna and flora totally unique from the great continent to the north. With the

rising of the land bridge, the plants and animals of these two different worldswould begin to mingle. The event would become known as the Great American

Biotic Interchange.

This history was exciting, uniquely Central American, and frankly persuasive from a conservation point of view. The fact of the Biotic Interchange

seemed to powerfully reinforce the notion that if avenues for movement were left open between the parks and protected areas of Central America, plants and animals would indeed take advantage and move along them. If forested river

banks could be protected, or mountain ridges, which dominate so much of theCentral American landscape, could be left un-timbered, then biological corridors

could be maintained, and the interchange might continue into the indefinite future,

and the remarkable biodiversity of the region would not diminish.

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We worked a lot with governments during the course of the Paseo Pantera

project. The funding for the initiative came from the US Agency for International

Development (USAID), and was thus to be viewed as a bilateral, or in this case,multilateral (seven host countries), assistance program. Our discourse over the 5-

year life of the project included park services from each country, tourist ministries,

divisions of forestry, and other federal agencies. In fact, it was the governments of the region who took the idea offered by the Paseo Pantera project to the 1992

“Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, and announced to the world that the Central

American states would do their part to save biodiversity by implementing abiological corridor along the length of the isthmus. (It would become known as

the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor).

Not withstanding the general enthusiasm for the regional corridor expressed by the governments and, indeed, by a growing number of international aid

agencies, we who were driving the Paseo Pantera project knew that to achieve

eventual success, we had to have public support: It’s axiomatic in conservation inmost places in the world.

So, one of our strategic decisions along these lines was to write a book. I reached out to the leadership of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

(STRI) in Panama to find some help. I knew ahead of time that STRI scientists had

expertise in most, but not quite all, facets of the Central American geological,biological and cultural riches that define the region. To fill in any gaps, we would

recruit from outside of STRI. Our intent was to present to the reader, in a

somewhat technical way, all that is remarkable about Central America, bolstering in the reader’s mind and soul the urgency to maintain the natural and cultural

heritage of the isthmus for generations to come.

Dr. Anthony Coates, the deputy director of STRI, became my chief counterpart in this book-writing exercise. He became editor of the volume,

coordinating with the numerous participating writers, and, as a renowned

geologist in his own right, contributing a key chapter on the tumultuous geomorphologic events that brought the land bridge into existence.

The book was published by Yale University Press. We called it Central America: A Natural and Cultural History. The skilled staff of STRI translated the

work, and it was published in Spanish as well (Paseo Pantera: Una Historia de la

Cultura y Naturaleza de Centroamerica). As a subset of the overall Paseo Pantera project, as a “deliverable” in

USAID parlance, I was very satisfied with the book…and I had learned a lot, as

well. But, perhaps I have a too-literal mind. The emergence of the land bridge

was an extremely prolonged affair. The biotic interchange may have begun even

before the uplifting ocean bottom was fully dry. Birds, for example, might have

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http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300080654






begun flying across archipelagos of new islands; tree seeds might have become

airborne on prehistoric winds to alight on an ever-approaching continent. But,

this gradualism was frustrating to me. I sensed a need for something moreimmediate to bring the story of the land bridge to life. I had driven and flown

around Panama. I was familiar with the Darien Gap and its intimacy with the

Chocó rainforests of Colombia and the South American continent. I could easily persuade myself that the lowlands of the Darien had only recently risen from the

sea; that the Darien Gap was where the final span of the land bridge had been

forced up by the collision of tectonic plates below. Here, I thought, is where it happened --- so I needed to put a sentient being there to bear witness! And, given

the circumstances, why not a panther to be my surrogate observer? ____

The cat was Leona, a panther of the late Pliocene era whose sleek

appearance signaled clearly that she was the immediate precursor to the modern puma or cougar or mountain lion. She had the smallish head and very long, heavy

tail of the contemporary Puma concolor , but spots were lingering on her lower

abdomen, flecking her otherwise tawny hide. She had broader shoulders and hips

than today's cougars, but she was smoothly feline. She was no brawny saber tooth

tiger, and the presence of those monsters out on the adjoining savannah was a

constant influence on her behavior. She clung to the forest edge as she traveled.

Leona was in duress. There was true destiny in her future; she would be the

herald of a new biogeography for half the earth, but she was not cognizant of that,

of course, nor motivated by such galactic possibilities. Leona was pregnant. Her

belly was swollen with the advanced gestation. Finding a secure spot, a lair, with

access to water and the possibility of prey, was paramount to her, and, after days, a

week, of unsuccessful searching, her anxiety was increasing by the hour, now. It

was almost time. She needed a den where she could bring her twin kittens to term,

bear them, and then nurture the little newborns, out of harm's way. The endless

pacing, searching, combined with the metabolic demands of the near-term fetuses,

was taxing her to a critical degree. She panted quietly as she slipped along through

the brush at the forest's edge.

Leona's difficulties had begun when she had been displaced from her

established, prey-rich hunting range, many miles to the west. This was her first pregnancy, and it had begun when she had mated with a male whose range

overlapped her own. But the male cruised through scent-marked home ranges of

two other females, and they had become pregnant at about the same time as Leona.

One of these two females was an immediate neighbor of Leona. She was fully

mature, and half again as heavy as Leona. As the big cat's pregnancy advanced,

she became agitated, instinctively assessing the ease of capturing prey in her own

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home range during the demanding weeks of gestation just ahead. She would run

short, she knew, so, while still fit enough to fight, she attacked Leona. She

repeated the assaults and ambushes, and Leona, with her own maternity a burden,

gave up. She left the productive home range to the larger cat.

The dilemma Leona faced was dire. Cats abounded on the tropical peninsula

of land where she lived; potential home ranges were scarce. With each new

season, grown 2-year old cats would fight for hunting turf, and these struggles

could be lethal outright, or they could yield devastating wounds, or, at the very

least, they would force yet another cat into a dangerous gypsy-like limbo. Leona

had fought for her place at the edge of the forest, but that bloody struggle had

happened long before her pregnancy. To take on the big female in ferocious

combat would likely have led to a miscarriage of her kittens. She had to move on.

Her search for a new space to live was constrained. To her north, up slope

toward the mountains, the tall forests grew. In them, a large jaguar species lived;

an animal with a massive head, supporting jaws strong enough to crush a tapir'sskull. The jaguars thrived in the deep forest, and specialized in killing large-

bodied prey, like the tapirs of the wetlands and the pig-like peccaries that foraged

everywhere. These massive cats would not hesitate to kill Leona rather than let her

reside among them where she might interfere with their hunting success. And to

Leona's south were the savannahs, rich with grazing and browsing game, but

dominated by the saber-toothed cats. The great cats were large because their prey

was large. The canine teeth, the saber teeth, could jab into vital organs and blood

vessels of even the largest mastodon. They would not only try to kill Leona, they

would eat her as well. To these big animals, Leona was mere prey.

And so Leona, and the rest of her species, was confined to the low bush of

the forest and savannah interface; a vegetative transition zone, which, in fact,

supported abundant prey, especially small to medium-bodied rodents, deer, long-

legged birds, and even reptiles. It was adequate habitat, and Leona was well

adapted to it in body and behavior, but, for the most part, it was occupied. As she

traveled along, she was constantly crossing territories of other cougars. She knew

it, too, because of the urine marks left by the resident cats. The females would

defend their territories unhesitantly. The males might try to court Leona, but it

would be their intent to kill her cubs the moment they were born. The only

offspring a male cougar would tolerate near him would be his own offspring; hisown blood. So Leona hurried along through the landscape, her time in any one

territory measured simply by how long she could avoid discovery. There was no

end to the tension. There was danger, hunger, and too much metabolic heat.

And there was another ominous problem; something no advanced terrestrial

mammal could tolerate with equanimity: The earth was shaking. Almost daily, at

irregular intervals, Leona's world would tremble. Every few days, the quakes

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would be violent, and Leona would splay out on the ground, her clawed toes biting

into a dirt surface that betrayed her with sudden instability. The earthquakes were

incomprehensible, and utterly terrifying incidents for animals; and for expectant

females, the fear alone had dangerous possibilities. Leona gradually learned to

cope with the quakes. She had not been harmed; not yet, anyway, and so the

events were as though set upon by a malicious forest spirit. She would clutch the

ground, fearful and dismayed by the jelly-like substrate, but she came to

understand that she would not die; that the terror would pass.

Along with the onset of regular earthquakes, some weeks before a volcano,

far away to the west had exploded. So far away was the eruption that the sound,

yet another worrisome anomaly in Leona's troubled world, was like an

encompassing vapor. The sound seemed to come from her own chest cavity, from

the tree trunks, from the ground. The ambience, for many minutes, was dense with

a deep sound that vibrated in her large paws, and caused the hair on her spine to

stand upright. And thereafter, the days were dark in early afternoon. From hillcrests, Leona could see a plume of ash and smoke that rose and drifted across her

western horizon. The ash did not settle on her part of the peninsula. The crater

was too far, and the winds too easterly. But the change in the diurnal regularity of

life, the early apparent onset of twilight, was disturbing. The alert cat found the

pall to the west troubling, augmenting the menace of the shaking earth,

complimenting fearsomely the threat of attack by other predators.

Leona stood and gazed from the cover of a tall, branching, thorny acacia

bush. She watched with interest a group of little horses, judging if their slow

progress across the grassland would bring them close enough to the brushline to

permit a strike. But she was distracted yet again. The fetal kittens stirred within

her womb, and as she shifted her stance, the earth itself stirred beneath her feet.

Nothing seemed secure. Everything was changing. As a big cat in an old line of

large predators, Leona had courage. She had patience. She had a certain analytical

intelligence, common to successful hunting animals. But her genetic heritage had

not prepared her for these strange times. Overwrought, Leona issued a loud,

frustrated hiss, as though to threaten the invisible tormentors around her, and then

she shrieked as only a cougar can shriek. The wild, demonic cry swept out to the

group of grazing horselets, and they exploded in flight.

Still huffing, Leona began to trot through the brushline, heading for the taller trees, to the south. At least temporary shelter, a place to pass the night, might be

found there.

Her haste, fueled by a degree of feline petulance, worked unexpectedly to

her favor. The acacias here were heavily browsed and coppiced. They grew

dense, thoroughly obstructing sightlines, creating walls, vegetative canyons, and

blind cul-de-sacs. As Leona came hurrying around one of these impenetrable

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shrubs, she collided with a running deer. It was a half-grown fawn, still with spots.

It was running at such speed that avoiding the big puma was impossible. Leona

reacted with the electric speed of her kind, getting her clawed paws around both

shoulders of the deer, and her jaws instantly to the slender neck. The spinal cord

was severed, but the deer flailed spasmodically, stirring up dust and dirt. Grimly

addressing her task, Leona's head was down, her forepaws still crushing the body

of the little deer, when out of the dust a fox flew over her head, emitting a thin

wail. Startled, Leona was compelled to release her jaws from the deer's neck to

look behind her at the mad canid. As she did, a second deer, an adult, streaked into

the scene, and butted Leona on an exposed shoulder. Leona bellowed out a harsh

roar, and leapt high into the air. The parent deer began stutter stepping and puffing

air. The fox, yipping constantly, was joined by a second, the vixen, perhaps, and

the two dashed around the puma and the dancing deer, outraged at the ruination of

their efforts to separate the fawn from its mother.

Becoming aware that she was in no mortal danger within this peculiar whirlwind of dust, noise, and small animals, Leona moved to get clear. She lunged

at the nearest fox, striking out with a dangerous paw, and braying in her shocking

cougar roar. Then she spun around, clutched the fawn carcass in her teeth, and,

with ears plastered against her skull, she bolted up the acacia-bordered trail,

shouldering the mother deer into the brush.

Leona trotted along, head high, holding the dead fawn behind the head, the

carcass draped across her neck, away from her feet. After some minutes, she

realized the yapping little foxes had given up on reclaiming their prey, and the

fortunate cougar stopped to rest. After a quick check of her surroundings, the tired,

pregnant cat began to devour the small deer. The meat and the salty fluids she

ingested stimulated her to begin purring for the first time in many days. By the

time she stopped cracking bones and tearing flesh, only the head and one tattered

shoulder of the deer were left. Leona cleaned herself meticulously with her raspy

tongue, took up the remains of the carcass in her jaws, and resumed her walk

toward the tall trees of the forest. The daylight was quickly passing, the twilight

made more abrupt and acute by the volcanic ash in the distant horizon.

The cougar walked straight for an extremely tall tree with an enormous

spread of branches, all mostly in the same plane, like an umbrella. It stood taller

than the surrounding forest canopy, and Leona knew that at the base of this greatsentinel tree, the flaring, buttressed roots would create little canyons. The roots

were like walls, radiating out from the tree trunk. They propped the tree up

effectively, helping it withstand wind and earthquakes; and between a pair of these

walls, a big cat could find concealment and partial shelter.

Leona stashed her deer carcass in the branches of a nearby tree leaning at a

drastic angle. Then she circled the big-buttressed trunk, looking for suitable

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accommodations. Between one set of buttresses, shrubs were growing. Slithering

in behind the shrubs, Leona found herself thoroughly sheltered, with massive

wooden walls on two sides of a triangular enclosure, and shrubbery on the third.

After a few turns in the confined, protective space, she lay down, resting so that

she could gaze out into the growing night. A jaguar patrolling in the darkness of

the interior forest began a sequence of short, deep, guttural growls. On the

savannah, dire wolves set up a cacophony of singing, regrouping after a day of

camel hunting. These sounds were as they should be, as far a Leona was

concerned. There was order in the world. She could rest.

The following day, after retrieving her deer carcass and gnawing on it until

only the jawbones were left, Leona set out again on her quest for a birthing site.

She came upon a stream that flowed out of the forest and meandered across the

plains of the savannah. The forest itself, and the low, interior mountains, were all

giving way to the arid, grassy savannah. A narrow gallery forest, however,

bordered the stream; a band of tall trees that wandered with the nurturing streamacross the plains.

Leona followed this corridor for two full days. She didn't dally, of course.

There were scrapings here and there, dirt scratched onto feces by other big cats,

left as signals to encroachers or nomads like Leona. She kept moving, but the

riparian forest was ideal as habitat for this cougar. It pierced the heart of the

savannah, taking her close to grazing herds of hoofed mammals, yet preserving the

cover she relied upon for ambushes as well as safety. She could duck into the

narrow, shaded forest to hunt or to drink from the stream. She could cross the

stream, and scan the grasslands on the opposite side for prey. For a predator that

sought the complex habitat of an ecotone, like the boundary between forest and

savannah, the long strip of forest along the creek provided a virtually limitless and

well-provisioned ecotone. And, it led somewhere. The stream in the forest was

going gently down slope. The stream was heading for the sea.

On her last afternoon of traveling, using the gallery forest as a road,

hideaway, and source of basic sustenance, Leona noticed that she was coming to

the ends of the earth. The broad savannah, dotted here and there with patches of

trees, low brush, termite mounds and knobby rock outcrops, dropped off in a long,

low cliff, beyond which there was haze. Her dependable little creek, now a meager

trickle, having given up most of its flow along the expanse of the grassy plateau,gurgled over the cliff's edge, and splashed upon rocks some five body-lengths

below. There, the freshwater was lost in heavy cobbles, and swamped by the low

waves of an ocean.

This was a perplexing situation for the panther, and she squatted down and

simply stared at the vast body of water. Gulls over the sea called in irritating

tones, and careened into the water. Long-beaked birds, twenty in a line, soared

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toward her, following the edge of the cliff where an on-shore breeze held them

aloft. The breeze brought with it a salty mist that stimulated the cat to deep

breaths, and caused her tongue to flash out repeatedly, cleaning her muzzle of the

unusual and out-of-place mineral flavor.

Leona stalked the cliff edge, moving to the south along the eastern extreme

of her peninsula. It was the absolute southeastern terminus of the northern

continental landmass. The cliff face was very raw; rocks had recently been

tumbled, cracked and broken. Here and there, Leona hopped across narrow

fissures extending perpendicular to the cliff, running back into the savannah. A

tiny, rugged island came into view on her left as she strode along the strange edge

of the earth. Beyond the island was another, and beyond it, a third, very far away,

all seemingly in a row. In the direction of that line of mean little islets, on the

distant horizon, there were banks of clouds, piling up high, as paleo-tropical winds

brought waves of humid air to collide with another continent. It was what human

beings would call South America, and it had been brooding out there for 60 millionyears in splendid isolation, as paleontologists would later say, and ginning up a

wholly unique assemblage of fauna and flora.

Imperceptively, the distant continent was creeping over a bed of magma

toward Leona, the pregnant panther.

The big cat paced slowly, her curiosity driven to comprehend this new

landscape. A big kopje protruding from the plain on her right caught her eye, but

before she turned to explore it, she rounded a gentle headland. Immediately she

was aware of the noise of a true surf line, as long combers rolled in from the

southwest, and crashed into the rocky shore. She stood and gazed at this

tumultuous zone of exploding water. The noise grew as she stared. Waves broke

on shore, but others, in mid-channel, stayed in place; fully formed but not

advancing. They were standing waves, born in the conflict of ocean currents going

one way, and wave energy going in the other. The water mass out there was in

motion, and it was accelerating as she watched. A tree trunk was carried into the

pass, and raced through like a battering ram. It was a rising tide in the western

ocean, and all of its waters were trying to rush through the channel between the

continents. It was a scouring, earthmoving force that displaced boulders, and

would sweep away any terrestrial animal that might become trapped in its flow.

One ocean basin sought to swallow the water of the other, and the noise grew to adeep rumble. Leona lowered her ears and backed away from the cliff. She turned

from the terrible noise, and trotted toward the rugged kopje, certain, in her way,

that the knob of rocks, earth and brush would provide a place to hole up, regain her

composure, and maybe give birth.

At a trot, the kopje was 30 minutes from the edge of the sea. Leona

approached, and then slowly circled the little hill, reconnoitering. Small borrowing

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rodents chittered from various watch posts on the hill. A long-legged crested

raptor, a large caracara, spread its wings and sailed away toward the west. At the

base of the irregular mound facing north was a jumble of boulders. The fallen

rocks had created nooks and crannies there, and Leona closed in to inspect. She

stopped abruptly. There was a rank odor about the place. Testing the vapor, she

could distinguish decayed meat, urine, and an overbearing musk, a glandular

excretion that bound the whole cloud together. And from the shadows of the

boulders, there came a threat call, a deep chirring, almost a growl, but of a higher

frequency. There was danger here, but the cougar crept closer. She needed cover;

the risk was worth taking. The menacing racket from the bolder pile grew in

intensity, and then two dark, agile forms exploded from concealment to attack

Leona. They were weasels; large ones; bigger than badgers, almost the size of

wolverines, with white caps on top of chocolate fur; and muzzles made bright with

the shine of white teeth.

The weasels darted to either side of the big cat. She was flanked before thefighting had even begun, but Leona spun around and gained an advantage. With

her big, vulnerable tail tucked between her legs, she put the bolder pile and the

massif of the kopje itself to her rear. With her back protected, she confronted the

harsh, grating noises of the weasels. They tried a trick that seemed almost

rehearsed. The smaller of the two animals, evidently the female, made a rush to

the right. As the cougar leaned to intercept, the bigger male lunged for the exposed

neck and shoulder of the intruding cat. But, Leona was too quick for that scheme.

She recovered her balance in an instant, and with the charging weasel now very

close, she was able to deliver a near-mortal blow with her big forepaw. She fainted

once at the female weasel to force her back, and then spun to press the advantage

with the dazed male. Her jaws got a good hold on the head of the weasel, and

when the claws of her hind feet eviscerated the animal, the struggle quickly ended.

Leona slung the dieing male aside and squared on the hissing, chirring, female,

who, with many loops and side-to-side starts and stops, gradually retreated into tall

grass.

The stench was now overpowering. In the throes of death, the male weasel

had expelled something that made the cat wince and sneeze. She hissed, but

reached out a clawed foot and dragged the weasel carcass up the side of the kopje,

and left it secured at the base of a cactus plant. Odor or not, the flesh was edible,and food was of utmost importance to the pregnant cat.

She descended to the boulder pile again, and began nosing around. She

found the weasel den behind a rock and under a shelf protruding from the kopje.

The strong, heavily clawed weasels had excavated the cavity into a room easily

large enough to accommodate the cougar. Only the odor discouraged her, but

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Leona began cleaning the place; scraping out bone fragments, fur and plant debris

on which the weasels had slept.

She was tired, now. Exhausted. She stepped out from behind the doorway

boulder and gazed across the plain. The sun was setting. A golden light was

engulfing the place. Vultures were soaring in straight lines, coasting toward

roosting trees in the gallery forest, silhouetted for the cat at a trotting distance of

about one hour to the north. The location of the forest, and its sheltered little

creek, registered with the cat. It was important. But, for now this den was critical,

and it was hers. She retreated into the room, made a few turns, and then settled

down to rest; her body curled up, the heavy tail looped across her muzzle.

In the safety of the den, the kittens, a male and a female, were born around

sunup the following morning. Stimulated by insistent mewing, unusual odors, and

a novel flood of hormones, the young mother cat busied herself, learning quickly

the right things to do with the two new creatures in her life. Once the kittens and

the den were cleaned up, Leona settled down to let the little ones nurse. They plumped up quickly, and then they slept. It was almost midday before Leona was

able to leave the den to check her surroundings.

From the top of the kopje, the cat could watch for danger, and for potential

prey. The view, the advantages it gave her, left the cat with a measure of

contentment. She had the carcass of the weasel to feed on today, adding to her

sense of security. Resilient as she was, the birthing process had been taxing.

Instead of a strenuous bout of hunting, she could rest, regaining strength and

stamina. But, by the following day, she would have to set out for fresh game and

water. The kittens would be confined to the den and the shadows, contours, and

crevices of the kopje for five weeks.

As the weeks passed by and the kittens grew, Leona developed a routine.

She would hunt in the mornings, following a dawn nursing of the spotted kittens.

With them quiet and slumbering, she would trot along a trail in the direction of the

stream and its shoreline forest. She would return by early afternoon, well watered,

and usually hauling a carcass of some sort to appease the ravenous kittens. For a

number of days, she was very successful hunting big lizards of the iguana family.

A sandbar had formed in a bend of the creek, pushed up during an earlier season of

high water. Iguanas were gravid at this time of year. They would descend from

the trees and lianas of the stream's edge, driven by primordial forces to the whitesand where they could dig holes and lay eggs. The big, bulging iguanas were very

vulnerable out on the sand. Leona learned quickly that their primary reaction to

her sudden charges was to bolt for the water of the stream. The iguanas were agile

swimmers. But, before long, the mother cat became able to kill two of the big

lizards in a morning. She would kill and eat one on the spot, relishing the rich eggs

that spilled from the gutted iguana. Then, patiently hiding in dry, flood-tossed

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debris surrounding the sandbar, she would ambush another lizard, and head back to

the kopje.

The stream was a magnet for grazing fauna from the surrounding plains.

Leona, a specialist in attacking from ambush, found several principle trails leading

into the creek from the grasslands. Camels, horses, deer, even peccaries would

eventually come along toward one of her hideouts, and fall to her sudden, powerful

charges. She avoided the bovids. The bison-like beasts were too large and

dangerous to bother with; and had she killed one, she could not have easily

dragged the ponderous carcass back to the kittens.

One morning when a group of Pliocene horses had finally completed a timid

approach to the stream bank to drink, Leona tensed to attack. The horses’ ears

shifted back and forth, and their tails switched constantly to drive off flies and

dispel nervous energy. Leona bunched her front and rear quarters even tighter

against her body for the impending leap. She was fixated on a little mare whose

rump protruded from the row of rumps. Her decision was made…and suddenly theearth leapt from beneath her body. So violent was the shift that the big cat was

spiraled in place; rotated by the amount of a whole circle. There was a

simultaneous upward thrust of bedrock, and Leona crashed down from her spin,

stunned, her clawed paws automatically reaching out to clutch and control this

bucking earth. The powerful temblor was accompanied by shattering sounds of

cracking rock, falling trees and terrified animals. The herd of horses was in a

shambles. All were down, all were bleating in a high, piercing scream; several

were broken, the others desperately trying to regain footing, clumsily, like

newborn colts. The stream itself seemed to have disappeared. A shroud of dust

engulfed the place.

Leona was dazed by her violent return to earth. She held her flattened

position for a moment, regaining her breath, and assessing the hazy, noisy world

around her. Then she was swamped with another surge of adrenalin: guarding her

kittens from this primal danger bloomed as the ultimate priority of her existence.

Leona stood and trotted off, ears plastered, snarling at the sounds and motions of

the destroyed streamside forest. The landscape was altered, and the dust further

impaired her efforts to visually backtrack to the kopje and the kittens’ den, but the

odor of the trail persisted. Leona loped across the savannah in search of her

progeny.When the earthquake had struck, the cougar kittens were tormenting a

tortoise. The clunky animal had stumped out of the grass into the gravel and dirt

yard that stretched like a messy apron out from one side of the kopje. Working

together, the growing kittens had overturned the tortoise, and had become

enthralled in the effort to pry and gnaw a way into this well-sealed container of

meat. The feet of the tortoise were now bloodied; the edge of the shell, where

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carapace and plastron met, was becoming tattered; the stubby tail was gone, the

taste of its juice adding a quarreling determination to the work of the two cats.

With the shock of the quake, the kittens bolted for what they knew as safety: the

den. The young female was in the lead, and as she vanished into the darkness of

the den, the entire wall of the kopje collapsed downward. She was crushed, and

the male kitten, running two body lengths behind, was trapped by earth and rubble.

Leona finished her rush across the grasslands with a leap into the remains of

the yard, still hazy with dust. She let out a loud version of her come-to-me call, as

an effort to find and assemble the little ones. There was no response, of course,

but, calling continuously, Leona charged on to where the den had once been. The

hindquarters of the male kitten were exposed, but motionless. Only the tail

managed a feeble flick. The rib cage pumped, but suffocation was quickly

overcoming the young cat. Leona was powerful, and she began ripping the dirt

and rocks that were pinning the kitten. One slab was wedged under the shoulder of

the kitten, defeating any chance he had of extracting himself. Leona clawed therock away, and then took the little cat up in her jaws. She dropped him a short way

from the landslide, and gave him some licks. Able now to freely inhale good air,

the kitten sat up; wobbly headed, but recovering quickly.

Leona returned to the raw rubble pile that had slumped down over her once-

secure hideaway. She resumed her calling, still trying to locate the other kitten.

There was so much overburden that not even a whiff of odor escaped the grave.

Leona searched, and dug at the earth, and made her plaintive cry. And then there

came a rumble, tumbling malevolently over the plain. Certain it was another

quake, Leona squawked and the male kitten rushed to her side. The two of them

bounded up the slope of the reduced kopje. From the top the two cats saw yet

another terrible and mysterious threat. A tsunami was racing in from the southern

sea.

The tidal wave had been spawned at the epicenter of the quake over the deep

water of the ocean that spread out to the south and west of Leona’s position. It was

high even before it hit the mud-laden continental shelf that fanned from the pass

between the two landmasses. As the wave crossed the shelf, it was forced into a

sharp peak. The narrowing gap between the two continents compressed the wave,

increasing its amplitude and speed. It seemed as high as the clouds and swift as a

river in flood. And then it collided with a newly emerged cliff. The world wastorn apart, it seemed to the two cats crouched on the hillock. The earthquake had

raised a shelf of rock along a seam that ran through the three islands Leona had

noticed in the channel between the closing continents. The fissure line seemed to

include the kopje where the cats were. The kopje itself was uplifted, Leona now

saw. The huge wave destroyed itself on the elevated rock face, colliding at a slight

angle, hitting near Leona first; the line of foam, spray and sound shooting away

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from her like slow lightning, ripping across the expanse toward the unseen

continent in the distance.

With the collision of water against the new platform of rock, there came a

flood. The tsunami came over the cliff at the end of Leona’s peninsula and rushed

out over the savannah. Churning water as deep as a tree was tall rushed toward the

kopje where the cats had sought their shelter. Leona and her cub shrank down

even more, molding themselves into the hard surface of the knob of rock, and they

stared at the oncoming water. The mother cat glanced once over her shoulder, but

saw no other outlet toward safety. Her claws protruded involuntarily, etching the

rock. As the water engulfed the kopje, a column of spray was sent up and over the

top of the knob. The cats were buffeted by compelling torrents; surrounded by

roaring sounds; choked to near drowning. The juvenile cat squalled loudly. He

dug sharp toenails into the mother cat, and she clung to hard rock projections on

the surface of the kopje, and she was not torn away.

With its kinetic energy spent, the tsunami vanished. Only idle water remained. It quickly dispersed, finding numerous fissures, gullies, and slopes

leading back to the sea, or down into the ruptured bedrock. Near the kopje where

the cougars still crouched tensely, the water reversed itself as sheet flow, and

began displaying its catch. Tree trunks and banks of matted grass floated by, and

so did the carcasses of animals. Under other circumstances, less earth-shaking

conditions, Leona might have tried to snag a newly-killed ungulate to eat, but she

let the parade of dead and dieing savannah fauna float by. A tortoise was among

the flotsam. Perhaps the same one the panther kittens had tried to break into. The

tortoise, with stubby feet, as round as a mastodon’s, was an ineffectual swimmer.

He bobbed along, rocking with swimming effort that took him nowhere; at the

mercy of the retreating saltwater. Unless he stranded before reaching the shore, the

tortoise would be carried to sea, to die, or to colonize some distant land.

Leona and the male kitten stayed where they were as the flooded afternoon

turned to night. The morning broke bright and clear. The sky promised another

day of arid, savannah weather. The savannah itself, however, had lost its texture.

The loft of the grass was gone. It was a sodden, flattened plain, all of the grass

within view lying flat on the ground. The salt water had devastated the cellular

integrity of the grass tissues. Their deep, dense root systems, as deep as the

healthy grass was tall, might survive to sprout another day, but most of what wasexposed to the flood would die. The tsunami had created a little desert here on

Leona’s peninsula.

She and the kitten descended to the plain below, and made a slow, cautious

circuit of the kopje. There was something new about the lay of the land, something

not attributable to the flood. She stepped carefully around the puddles of bitter

water, and gazed away to the east. There was no boundary to the land any more.

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The cliff at the sea’s edge was transformed. It had crumbled in the earthquake, and

then had been raised up, along with the land under the kopje, and the bottom of the

sea under the three offshore islands. It was that long barrier into which the tsunami

had crashed. It was a platform, a causeway leading into the haze, and the big cat

was drawn to it.

The two cats wandered out onto the lifted platform. They walked slowly all

morning. In a depression in the rock, they found stranded fish, dieing but good to

eat. A dolphin, wounded grievously, and chirping, was stranded in rocky rubble.

The cats sniffed the peculiar, warm blooded, finned animal, but did not attack it.

They moved on, passing the second of the three islands by midday. From some of

the damp cavities and pools of seawater on the platform there came a crackling

sound. A staccato of noise, like gravel falling on hard rock. It was not a pleasant

sound for the cats. Driven as much by irritation as curiosity, they approached one

of these offending pools to inspect. The crackling disarticulated itself into dozens

of individual snaps and pops. There were little animals in the pools, the cats saw;decapods, shrimp like creatures, similar to those the otters captured back in the

wetlands near Leona’s old home territory. One claw on each of these shrimp was

relatively huge; half the size of the body of the shrimp. A shrimp would extend

this outsized claw, and make a pop. And another. And another. The little

crustaceans in the pool were in mortal duress.

They were snapping shrimp. The large claw generated a pop so violent it

could stun prey. The shrimp popped to defend themselves, and they popped to

make love. They had lived on the muddy bottoms of the coastal shelves of both

oceans surrounding the peninsula. The passing tsunami had dissolved these mud

flats and banks, and tossed the shrimp-laden slurry far up on to the exposed

platform. Now the snapping shrimp popped in desperation. Their plight was

imminent death, of course, but there was another more profound change afoot.

With the rising of the platform where these individual shrimp would perish, the

pass between the two oceans had been closed. Any surviving snapping shrimp

colonies were now permanently separated. The divided populations would begin

to diverge in form and behavior from this time forward.

In the midday heat, the stranded snapping shrimp were being poached and

braised into crimson corpses. Leona’s big kitten pawed a few of the little animals

out, and began gingerly nibbling them apart. Out of the water, the snapping shrimpcould not snap. The distinctive sound was reduced to a faint click. Submerged,

the snapping shrimp produced a bubble, a tiny cavity in the water, made by the

sudden closing of the pincer on the big claw. As the bubble collapsed, the noise,

the snap, was generated. The physics was similar in miniature to a thunderclap

after lightning has blazed a gap in the air.

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In the late afternoon, the two cats approached what had been the third island

in the ocean pass. Now it was a rugged hill on a barren, steamy plain.

Anticipating, in cat-like fashion, the view and security of this high place, the cats

moved closer to the hill. They immediately encountered danger. A harsh squawk

blared out at them, made by an unseen creature behind the hill. There was another

squawk, and the cats began to run toward a flank of the hill. They scrambled

halfway up, and hesitated to check on the source of the cry. Peering over a bolder,

Leona saw an enormous two-legged animal with a long neck and a massive beak.

The cat realized it was a bird, but there was nothing in her experience to compare it

to. Indeed, the bird had never come this way before. It was Titanis, a predatory

bird evolved on the southern continent. It was taller than Leona was long. The

bird was obviously agitated by the strange surroundings, and squawked regularly

as a generic threat. It cocked its massive head, with a beak that could sever

femurs, and peered at the cats on the rocks above. As yet another threat, the

Titanis bird began a deafening episode of bill snapping. The upper mandible of the bill was like an echo chamber. Snapping the jaws together was like dry limbs

breaking. The cats shrunk for the racket. Titanis passed on, heading toward the

land from which Leona had come.

The cats climbed to the top of the hill as evening began to settle. In the

waning light, the mother cat could see coastlines to the south and east pulling away

in nearly opposite directions, embracing a continent of immense size. Leona the

puma and her young male offspring, had crossed a land bridge. The absence of

any earth tremors was already dispelling the accumulated stresses of the violent

uplift that had driven the sea away, allowing their traverse of the emerged bottom.

They gazed across the barren, still misty pass between two worlds. There would

be more animals crossing soon, the cats understood. The barrier, the dangerous

channel of seawater, was gone. There would now begin a grand resettlement, a

great interchange of the fauna of the time. Nothing would be the same. The world

had changed. In that moment of violence of the day before, a new road to the

future had formed, the path of the panther, and the two cats were the first to go

along its way.

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Path of the Panther

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Transcript of Path of the Panther