Our younger son spent the weekend camping close to a research station on Vancouver Island, near an estuary leading out to the ocean. He was reconnoitering nearby, at a creek as a possible venue for the oncoming summer season when he will be supervising post-docs as he usually does. He was wearing hip-waders when he happened at one juncture, to be waddle-walking along an isolated old logging road.

At a bend in the road he thought he saw the disappearing back-end of a young bear. When he turned the bend himself, at an obviously slower rate than the swifter animal's progress, the road straightened out and he could see ahead the unmistakable form of a big cat, its long tail swinging, white-tipped, the animal a deep brown colour, proceeding with the grace of a cougar, the first he's ever seen in the wild.

When it became aware of his presence, it turned to regard him, then languidly turned back to its business-like progress along the road, and soon disappeared from view. It would have been aware of our son's presence since, thinking it was a bear, he had shouted loudly at it, to make certain it knew that someone was nearby.

We were ourselves thrilled when, in broad afternoon daylight, two juvenile raccoons had appeared, one in our backyard at the composters and the second at the front of the house, sifting through what was left of the discarded seed and nut piles we replenish regularly for our neighbouring wildlife. But a cougar? I'd be somewhat less thrilled than immediately stricken into panic mode.

It was like that for me, paddling a canoe in a semi-wilderness Algonquin Park area with our son and his father, when we came up close and too personal to a moose cow. I insisted we back-paddle immediately while they were all for a closer look. As far as I'd been concerned we were far, far too close to the enormous animal.