In 1951, when the Sequim Prairie Garden Club first began to clear the 4-acre plot of what would become Pioneer Memorial Park, the site was choked with weeds and blackberry vines so thick that eventually “they found that an entire cow had become entangled and died,” according to Priscilla Hudson and Laura Singer’s “Sequim Prairie Garden Club and Pioneer Memorial Park, the Early Years.”
IT WAS ANOTHER tough week in the news. An 8-year-old was attacked by a cougar at Lake Angeles, a popular hiking and camping destination in the mountains above Port Angeles. While cougar attacks are rare, what makes this story even more astonishing is the fact that an 8-year-old hiked up to Lake Angeles in the first place. Walking up to Lake Angeles is not something most grown-ups would attempt even if they weren’t packing their camp on their backs. The kid had to be tough to do it. That could be why they survived. Even more incredible was the story of how the child’s mother ran the cougar off by yelling and screaming at it during the attack. Fortunately, the child survived with minor injuries. This is surprising since cougars are capable of taking down 200-pound deer and 1,000-pound elk. Maybe we don’t taste that good. Or perhaps these other large prey animals don’t have a fierce mother to protect them.