My boss told me once that if you spy a mountain lion, you're supposed to make yourself as BIG AS POSSIBLE (raise your arms over your head) and bark like a dog. Whatever you do, don't run away from it, because that triggers its "prey" instincts, and it will leap onto your back and sink its teeth into your neck and kill you. (This conversation was motivated a couple of years ago by a 
spate of mountain lion sightings in the open spaces around here and even in downtown Palo Alto, the killing of several local cattle by mountain lions, and by the killing of a mountain biker by a mountain lion in SoCal or Utah or something around the same time. Supposedly some girl was killed by a mountain lion as she was running around the Stanford Dish a few years ago. A less wild place you cannot imagine.) I used to see mountain lion footprints in Arastradero Preserve all the time.
I went to join Ace and his friends at Rancho San Antonio yesterday evening. He runs there on Thursdays with a bunch of speedy people, including a couple of national champion professional triathletes. Oh yes, would I lie? They're very friendly guys and gals, and asked if I would be joining them, but I demurred coyly, intimating that I had just used Ace for the carpool lane. (One guy actually self-deprecatingly confessed that he often couldn't keep up either, because he only ran seven minute miles. I can't believe I even let him talk to me.) So I started out with them, but as they ran towards the farm, I lost them in the cloud of dirt they kicked up behind them. I literally ate their dust.
But I was really just in the mood for a trail run, and to start folding some hills into my running mix, so I was perfectly content to trot along on my own. It was a perfect fall evening. Rustling dry leaves, a chilly breeze, slanting yellow sun. And Rancho is pretty because there are a variety of terrains - dry, exposed grassy areas, lowland moist spots, and even that quiet, peaceful atmosphere you get when there are lots of little trees bending overhead and lots of leaves carpeting the ground, so that you feel like you're actually indoors.
I was just coming out of an area like that, having seen all of two people on my run since losing the group of mustangs that was Ace and his friends, when I noticed that it was suddenly very dusky, and I was very alone. And I started to think about how it was mountain lion time of day. I started to look around, when I noticed, on the path up ahead, a tawny brown shape stepping into the bushes.
I slowed to a walk. My first thought that it was a deer...but it was much too low to the ground. I thought maybe it was a baby deer. But it was even too small for that, given the time of year. Was it...a mountain lion? I made like I wasn't scared, and raised my hands up over my head, and strode confidently up the path. It turned to face me; we made eye contact. It was a bobcat! Seriously, it l
ooked so much like a housecat, only a little bigger, and with excellent camouflage and tufty ears. But how do you act with a bobcat? Did it see 'victim' written all over my face? Would it reach out and scratch my leg? I waved my arms around and barked at it. It didn't scurry away in fear, it didn't slink off surreptitiously, it just stood there, unblinking, looking at me like I was a crazy person. My boss didn't tell me what to do if the feline predator doesn't go away. So I shrugged, and started walking 
past it, but walking slowly and keeping our eye contact. I didn't want to break into a jog and have it think I was prey. But then I got a little ways up the path and started to run, expecting any second to feel it digging its claws deep into my shoulders and sinking its fangs into my swanlike neck. It never did.
As I came off of the PG&E trail and ran towards the parking lot, a couple stood on the path, murmuring to each other. Another bobcat. They didn't know about the tall arms/barking maneuver. By this point I felt I had suffiiciently Timothy Treadwelled into the bobcat community to simply run past like it was no big thing. The couple (I'm assuming) was impressed.
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