Sometimes, Better a Dead Mountain Lion Than a Live Dog

Artist Heide Hatry & 

Luna the Mountain Lion (2023) [1]

 

 

I.

 

According to the author of Ecclesiastes, a living dog is better than a dead lion [9:4]. 

 

However, as the New York based German artist Heide Hatry knows, that's not always true; sometimes it is the deceased who have something vital to teach us, which is why her long fascination with corpses has often resulted in work of great insight.

 

Her latest muse (and family member) happens to be a stuffed puma [2], which interests because D. H. Lawrence also once drew inspiration from the long slim body and round face of a dead mountain lion, killed by two foolishly smiling hunters, in Lobo Canyon, New Mexico, on a cold winter's morning.    

 

He concludes his beautiful and misanthropic poem on the subject:

 

And I think in this empty world there was room for me and a mountain lion. 

And I think in the world beyond, how easily we might spare a million or two of humans 

And never miss them. 

Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white-frost face of that slim yellow mountain lion! [3]

 

Which is, of course, all-too-true ... 

 

 

II. 

 

According to the Nature Conservancy, there are only around 50,000 mountain lions left in the world; 30,000 in the United States and 20,000 in the rest of the Americas. Contrast this with the fact that the human population is believed to have reached 8 billion in November 2022. 

 

That's 1 mountain lion for every 160,000 people ...

 

And yet, 3000 of these magificent cats are still killed by the latter in the United States each year. Again, compare that with the fact that in the last 100 years there have been fewer than 130 officially documented cougar attacks on people, of which only 27 were fatal (which is less than the number of bee sting fatalities in the same period). 

 

It's very depressing: for whilst I still insist that even a dead puma is at least as fascinating as any of the 470 million mutts kept as pets around the world, it would be nice if there were a significantly higher number of live mountain lions - yes, even at the expense of one or two million human beings [4].

 

     

Notes

 

[1] This photo, taken from Hatry's newsletter, is also used as a profile picture to advertise her MFA Art Practice Lecture Series at the School of Visual Arts (NYC), where she is currently the artist in residence. Click here for further details. 

[2] Mountain lions are known for good reason as the cat of many names - in fact, they are listed in dictionaries under more names than any other animal in the world. Depending on the region and native language, common names for the American lion include cougar, panther, puma, and catamount. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Mountain Lion', in Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 351-352. The poem can easily be found in numerous places online; click here, for example. 

 

[4] Readers who agree, might like to support the work of the Mountain Lion Foundation (a non-profit organisation protecting mountain lions and their habitat): click here.