The Mule that Killed the Mountain Lion-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A series of pictures of a saddled mule making sport of a mountain lion.
The accompanying story says the lion was stalking the hunting dogs of a Montana couple while they were out on the range.
The man was going to fire a warning shot to scare the lion but before he could do it, his mule grabbed the lion and killed it by whirling it around and banging the lions head on the ground.
Then the mule put down the dead lion and acted as though nothing had happened.
The Truth:
These pictures and the story about the lion-killing-mule circulated for quite a while on the Internet before Steven Richards got the real story and published it in Western Mule Magazine.
The mule’s name is Berry and it belongs to 25-year old Jody Anglin from New Mexico.
Anglin says he enjoys hunting mountain lions and is usually accompanied by a cadre of hunting dogs.
In 1998 he got Berry to assist with the lion hunts.
On the first hunt, Berry was attracted to the carcass of a lion that Anglin had shot and sort of nuzzled it and nibbled at it.
With each new kill, however, Berry got more animated and couldn’t wait to get to the dead lions.
The pictures in the eRumor were taken in 2002 or 2003 and show Berry toying with a lion that was already dead, not killing it.
Someone along the way created the story about the Montana couple, the stalking lion, and the fanciful descriptions of the pictures.
Last updated 10/1/05