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As to the mountain lions reputed to have made their home in the Blue Ridge, Mr. Johnson wavers. “I never saw one. I remember being on patrol in the north end of the park in 1946 or ’47 when one ranger called and said to come up, that he’d just seen a mountain lion run into a culvert. It was winter, right above Flint Hill, and when I arrived, his bobcat was meandering down the mountain side.
“The way a bobcat trails one leg behind, it’s been mistaken for a mountain lion more than once,” Mr. Johnson said. “There are a lot of big bobcats that have fooled people.”
"When I was a kid, I KNOW there was a mountain lion at Piney River,” interjected Stella Johnson, the ranger’s wife and a native of Rappahannock County.
“Well, there are mountain lions to the north of Shenandoah, and mountain lions to the south of Shenandoah. I don’t see why they couldn't be here,” Mr. Johnson conceded.
The ranger never faced down a bear or a mountain lion in his 40 years of patrolling the mountain but he once had a confrontation with a bobcat.
“I got between a bobcat and his chipmunk one day,” said Mr. Johnson, chuckling at the memory. “That bobcat didn’t know whether he was more afraid of me or whether he wanted his chipmunk wrorse.” To the chipmunk’s everlasting relief, fear of the ranger prevailed.
Two-legged hunters were not so easily deterred.
"i’ve looked down the business end of a gun barrel more than once,” Mr. Johnson reported, recalling his brushes with trespassers in the national park game preserve. “Some will hunt there deliberately. Some don’t know' where the boundaries are and don’t care. Some know they’re near the park and are scared they’ll cross the boundary.”
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