One afternoon a cougar jumped into Joe Dye's dooryard at his ranch on the Sespe, picked up Joe's baby and sprang over the fence with it. Joe seized his rifle and shot the animal as it ran, and when the cougar felt the sting of the bullet he dropped the baby and ran up the mountain. He had seized the baby's clothes only, and the little one was not hurt. The next night the cougar returned, captured Joe's hound, carried it into the mountains and killed it. On the 1st of August, the report reached camp that the bears were having a picnic on the Mutaw ranch and were killing hogs by the score. John F. Cuddy's sons, the best vaqueros and bronco-riders in this part of the country, offered to go over to the Mutaw with the correspondent and lasso a bear if one could be found on open ground; accordingly, the party saddled up and took the trail up the Piru, arriving at the Mutaw meadows late in the night, after a rough ride of twenty miles. In the morning Mr. Taylor, one of the owners of the ranch, was found skinning a grizzly that had eaten strychnine in pork during the night. Mr. Taylor had put poison out all over the ranch and the prospect of catching a live bear seemed dubious, but all the poisoned meat that could be found was buried at once, and Bowers and the correspondent began building a trap to catch a bear that had been making twelve-inch tracks around the cabins. The Cuddy boys rode about looking for bear, and one of them lassoed an eagle that had waterlogged himself and was sitting stupidly on a rock by the creek. The bird measured nine feet across the wings. Messrs. Louis and Taylor, owners of the Mutaw, received the party hospitably and assisted in the work of preparing the trap. But Mr. Taylor forgot where he had put some of his poison, and in forty-eight hours all the dogs in the place, including the Examiner's two hounds, were stiffened out and turned up their toes. Chopping off their tails and pouring sweet oil down their throats did not restore them. No chance to lasso a bear presented itself, and as soon as the trap was completed and baited with two live pigs the party returned to Pine Mountain. At last it became evident that the bears on Mount Pinos could not be enticed into a trap while they had their pick and choice of the thousands of sheep that grazed on the mountain. They preferred to do their own butchering and would not touch mutton that was killed for them by anybody else. A cougar raided a camp one night, sprang upon the sheep from a willow thicket and killed three within twenty yards of the sleeping herder. The fastidious cougar cut their throats, sucked their blood and left their carcasses at the edge of the thicket without eating the meat. But the bears would not touch what the cougar left. Shortly after this the herders reported that the bears were avoiding the sheep and passing around the bands without making an attack.