This afternoon Chuck, Brayden, Hauggy and I took a walk at our favorite park. I was scouting a cool field where I planned on shooting Jill and Brandon’s maternity session in a couple of weeks. However, we won’t be going to that park again. We’ve been going to this park since Brayden was a few weeks old and I love it because there are so many cool trails to explore. We were walking towards a dam with cool graffiti on it and I hear Chuck yell, “Pick up Hauggy and RUN!”. I scooped Hauggy up and ran for my life, which is really hard to do with a 25 pound dog when I haven’t run in ten plus months. I knew from the sound of Chuck’s voice that it was either a mountain lion or a deranged man with a knife. We ran down a hill and got off the trail. We realized that we were going to have to walk back towards the mountain lion to get back to the trail. So, we started yelling help. As we were walking on the trails earlier I was cursing the mountain bikers who would go zipping up and down the trails, but now I was so happy for them because they could get to us fast. Two mountain bikers got to us right away and they escorted us back to the park.
Chuck told me when we got back to the car that he saw a big brown thing in the bushes about 200 feet away from us. He didn’t say anything at first because he didn’t want to scare me and he thought it was just a coyote. But, then it started running towards us and jumped over the bushes. That’s when he saw that it was a big mountain lion. I’m so glad I didn’t see it because I think I might have been too scared to run. When I called my parents to tell them, my Dad said that we did the completely wrong thing and should have faced it and made ourselves “big”. Dad, the next time you get chased by a mountain lion let’s see what you do! We were just trying to save your grandson and granddog. I think once I picked up Hauggy it gave up. The whole thing was so scary. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened. I’m just glad it didn’t. The statistics say that you are 1000 times more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to get attacked by a mountain lion. But, today was close enough for me.
I don’t even want to think about little Brayden on his chair in the middle of that field (because I probably would have taken his 3 month pictures there) and a mountain lion jumping out of the bushes or if I would have had pregnant Jill all the way out there who wouldn’t have been able to run. I’m going to start carrying pepper spray with me so at least I will feel a little bit more in control if I were in the situation again. I’m bummed because I lost one of the coolest locations to shoot at, but I will just have to find another one. Any suggestions for my maternity shoot?
And to make everyone happy after my scary story, here is a picture of Brayden Bittel. He was 4 weeks old in the picture. I love his toothless yawns! The shirt was given to him by my friend Jamie. He was supposed to wear it on Valentine’s Day, but he was still in the hospital. By the way, he slept through the whole ordeal. Even with Chuck running for his life he stayed totally asleep in his Baby Bjorn. Crazy kid misses all the fun adventures!
His diapers have Sesame Street characters on them and he hates when he gets the Elmo diapers! Don’t ask me why, but the kid hates Elmo. He’s not sleeping great through the night. He wakes up twice to eat and usually goes right back to sleep so it’s not that bad. All and all he’s a pretty happy kid and seems to be getting happier everyday.
Have a great weekend everyone!
