The Mountain Lion Story

1959

A true story

Written 1/2001* 1,180 Words

#124 By Howard Yasgar

One summer evening, in 1959, I was in the parking lot of Jimmies Restaurant.

Jimmies restaurant was located at Savin Rock amusement park in West Haven Connecticut.

That was where I met Tommy Letis, and we became the best of friends.

From that day in 1959 we started hanging around together.

I was 20 years old and Tommy was a couple of years older than me.

I was a little jealous of Tommy because I was working as an apprentice electrician for the minimum wage of

$1.37 an hour, and Tommy was running his own dump truck business making real money.

One day we went together to a Ford truck agency where Tommy ordered a new truck for $26000.00, wow.

Once we started hanging around together, I found Tommy to be one of the most fascinating and unconventional people that I ever met, and I think I liked the idea that Tommy could afford do whatever he wanted to do, and he could do it whenever he wanted to do it, and Tommy was able to do some pretty unconventional things, and I never knew what he would come up with next.

At the time of this story, I was still living with my mom and dad in a two-family house in Westville Connecticut.

One morning, I heard someone ringing the front doorbell, so I went downstairs to see who it was.

I was surprised to see my friend Tommy standing there along with one of his friends named Bobby Allen.

Bobby Allen was a bulldozer operator and he was also a friend of Tommy.

What I didn’t see at first was that Tommy had a leash in his hand and at the end of the leash was a full-grown mountain lion.

I had seen big mountain lions before, but I never thought I would see one in the hallway of my house.

This Mountain Lion was big, it appeared to be at least eight or nine feet long, and I could clearly hear him purring, as they all followed me up the front hallway stairs.

My bedroom happened to be in the rear of our house, so we had to walk through the living room.

I saw my mother run into her bedroom and I heard her locking her door.

I asked Tommy where the world he ever found a mountain Lion.

He said, “The Lion’s name is Brandy and I am babysitting her for a friend”.

Tommy said, “Go ahead and pet her, she won’t bite you”.

So, I did pet her, and Brandy appeared very docile and she was purring loudly.

As we all entered my bedroom, Brandy immediately stopped purring, and suddenly with all her strength, she jumped onto my bed yanking Tommy along right behind her.

I saw Brandy tightly biting into my pillow real hard, and she was squeezing it in her front paws, with her claws fully extended.

There was no more purring, Brandy was now growling, loudly.

I got a little scared, because I knew it was a goose down pillow, and I thought she would start ripping it apart, but Tommy calmly walked over to Brandy’s head, and he tightly grabbed both her upper lips, and pulled them up, showing Brandy’s bright and shiny canine teeth that were firmly sunk into my pillow.

I didn’t exactly know what to do, I saw Tommy’s friend Bobby Allen had retreated to a far corner of my bedroom.

But Tommy was fearless, he said to me, “Grab her lips like I’m doing, so I can open her upper and teeth and pull the pillow out.

I did what Tommy said and I grabbed Brandy’s rubbery upper lips and I lifted them as high as they would go.

as I did it, Tommy put both of his hands In between Brandy’s teeth and pried her mouth open enough to extract the pillow.

I could immediately feel the tension in the cat’s muscles ease as it slowly released its grip on the pillow.

Then Tommy spread both of Brandy’s paws, which had their sharp claws fully extended.

Tommy then spread Brandy’s paws enough so we could completely extract the pillow.

Using the leash, Tommy gently pulled Brandy off my bed and back onto the bedroom floor.

Was I nervous? You bet I was, but what happened didn’t seem to bother Tommy even a little bit.

Tommy said, “The problem is, It’s past her lunch time”.

Then Tommy said, “Let’s all go to Jimmy’s Restaurant where we can buy her some minute steaks”.

As Tommy spoke, I could hear Brandy was now purring again.

Down the stairs we went, walking across the street, that’s where my 1959 Chevy convertible was parked.

I could see several neighbors watching us.

Brandy was still purring loudly, and she was following right behind us.

I got in the driver’s seat; Bobby Allen jumped in the back seat and tommy got in the passenger side seat as he pulled Brandy in on top of us.

Brandy’s head was now on my lap, and one of her giant paws was resting in my steering wheel.

The rest of Brandys body was comfortably curled up on Tommy’s lap, and the car’s consol. She now appeared to be taking a nap.

Tommy then grabbed the end of Brandy’s tail and pulled it into the car so he could close the passenger side door.

Off we went to Savin Rock in West Haven, and Jimmy’s Restaurant where our friends were.

Every time I had to turn a corner, I gently lifted Brandy’s paw up and out of the steering wheel.

We must have been quite a site for anyone looking at us.

Once we were at Jimmy’s Restaurant, Jimmy and all his employees were so excited to see such a docile mountain lion, they fed her all the raw minute steaks she could eat for free.

Tommy babysat Brandy for several weeks, until one weekend there was no more Brandy.

Tommy said she sadly had choked on some straw in her cage.

Looking back on it, what we had done was certainly foolish, one bite from Brandy could have ended it all.