Cautionary tale of encroaching on nature

We've all walked to our cars in a parking lot on a dark night and felt those invisible eyes on our backs. The feeling is enough to raise the small hairs on your neck. In the early 1990s in Boulder, Colo., residents felt those same imperceptible eyes, only it wasn't the stare of a madman waiting to hurt or violate someone, David Baron tells us in his book "The Beast in the Garden: a Modern Parable of Man and Nature."

In Baron's depiction of 1991 Boulder, Colo., the eyes tracking residents were those of a predatory mountain lion — Puma concolor — also called a cougar, panther or puma. The victim was a male jogger, who was killed, dragged and eaten by that cougar on a sunny Monday morning.

Mountain-lion attacks on humans historically are rare. Baron pinpoints humankind's ill-advised desire to live close to nature as the cause of this attack. It's an argument that people in this region should consider, since Baron's book serves as a warning of what can happen when the lines between wilderness and urbanity become less defined.

In Washington, we've already begun to see the impacts of moving neighborhoods into the wilderness. In April, an Issaquah family living in a cul-de-sac neighborhood reported daily sitings of cougars. An angler on the Kalama River in Southwest Washington was attacked by a mountain lion in May.

The author, who has reported on science and environmental issues for National Public Radio during the past 15 years, does a good job of backing his criticism of how people don't consider the dangers of living so close to wilderness.

Early on, the nation treated mountain lions as pariahs that needed exterminating, but in recent years, the mountain lion has regained its stature as a symbol of the wild. Baron tells how Boulder residents loved their daily trysts with deer that traipsed through their back yards, oblivious to the fact that deer are prime prey for cougars. He includes interviews which show residents' initial excitement at the prospect of a cougar living within their community.

But it wasn't long before wildlife specialists and others warned that the natural wonders Boulder residents were enjoying would prove to be a dangerous mix with suburban pleasures.

Baron's writing is straightforward and doesn't rely on ecological or scientific jargon to sound impressive. "The Beast in the Garden" almost reads like a crime novel. The book moves through the days leading up to the jogger's attack, and each chapter ends on a cliff-hanging note.

While the topic is chilling, it's questionable whether an incident so long ago works as the core of a book that aims to interest a wide audience. But Baron's genuine interest in the topic makes "The Beast in the Garden" an interesting, educational read.

And a repeat of the Boulder incident is almost inevitable, considering today's trends. "Mountain lions must kill to survive," Baron writes. "America is engaged in a grand and largely unintentional experiment."

Or even more simply put: Watch your back.