SACRAMENTO, Calif. — He began his trip the way many hikers do: Leaving the city late in the day, a long drive to the country, then a simple camp under the stars to launch a multi-day backpacking trip.
The San Francisco Bay Area man, 63, arrived at his favorite hiking destination outside Nevada City near dusk on Saturday. He parked his car and hiked into the mountains a short distance before throwing down a sleeping bag for an informal camp the first night, with plans to hit the trail early in the morning.
Instead, he got a surprise visitor in the night and a rude awakening.
The man, whom officials would not identify, was attacked at 1 a.m. Sunday by a mountain lion while sleeping under the stars. The big cat - California's top wildlife predator - approached him in the dark, perhaps out of simple curiosity, and the confrontation quickly brought the hiking trip to a bloody close.
The man survived, but with numerous bites and cuts, and the mountain lion now faces a death sentence. The California Department of Fish and Game confirmed the attack based on a forensic examination of the man, his belongings and the scene, said Patrick Foy, a spokesman for the department and a game warden.
It thus becomes only the 15th confirmed mountain lion attack on humans in California since the start of recordkeeping on the subject in 1890. Only six of these have been fatal.
The incident does not fit the typical profile of a mountain lion attack, in which a cougar mistakes a person for fleeing prey.
"The frequency of lion attacks on humans is extremely rare," Foy said. "In this case, it's hard to say what happened. He posed zero threat to this lion because he was asleep."
In the latest incident, the man laid out his sleeping bag at around 10 p.m. Saturday, Foy said. The location was northwest of Nevada City along a tributary of the Yuba River. Foy would not reveal the exact location, saying the department does not want people drawn to the area because wardens are still tracking the mountain lion and are wary of disturbing the animal's trail.
The man had driven to the Nevada City area that evening to start his hike. He knew the area, Foy said, having made similar trips before. He did not use a tent, and wore a stocking cap on his head to stay warm.
Around 1 a.m. Sunday, Foy said, the man awoke to the sensation of something pressing on his head, and moved an arm to protect himself.
"He felt very much what felt like a big heavy paw on his head," Foy said. "When he reacted to that, instantly the animal just ferociously attacked him. He didn't necessarily fight back, but he did say he did his best to protect his head."
The attack lasted less than 2 minutes, Foy said, and then the lion backed off. From a distance of about 15 yards, the lion simply looked at the man for about 30 seconds and disappeared into the night.
"The animal just ceased the attack," Foy said.
The man drove himself to a hospital in Grass Valley, where he was treated and released for cuts and bites on his head and left arm.
Game wardens interviewed him at the hospital and collected evidence, including the sleeping bag and the man's knit cap, which had puncture marks in it.
They also visited the scene with tracking dogs, where they found mountain lion tracks. Not far away, they found a dead domestic cat, which later proved to have been killed and partially eaten by a mountain lion, Foy said.
It has been five years since the last verified mountain lion attack on humans in California.
In January 2007, 70-year-old Jim Hamm was jumped by a mountain lion while hiking at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Humboldt County. He did what experts recommend in the event of a mountain lion attack: He fought back as hard as he could, with help from his wife, who was just a few paces ahead.
Hamm survived, although with gruesome scars to show for it.
Mountain lions don't normally look at people as food, said Tim Dunbar, executive director of the Sacramento-based Mountain Lion Foundation. When they do attack people, they usually attack from behind after mistaking the person for their typical prey, such as deer.
One well-known example is the 1994 case of Barbara Schoener, a distance runner who was jumped from behind by a cougar and killed while running on a trail at Auburn State Recreation Area.
It is possible the cougar in Sunday's attack was either sick or simply a curious young animal investigating a strange new object in its territory.
Dunbar leans toward the latter theory.
"To have a story where a lion is waking somebody up because it's putting its paw on the person's head - that just sounds strange," Dunbar said. "It's not an action of an animal - especially a lion - attacking a food source."
Fish and Game wardens were still attempting to track the mountain lion Monday. If found, it would be killed, Foy said, following state policy to kill cougars that attack people.
Dunbar has mixed feelings about that. He noted the incident is similar to one that occurred several years ago in which a mountain lion attacked a camouflaged hunter in bushes who was making turkey calls. The lion evidently thought it was attacking a turkey, and the state did not record the incident as an attack on a human, nor did it pursue the lion.
"If the lion had continued to show aggressive behavior towards the human, they would have to remove that lion," Dunbar said. "But in this case, it's almost like that isn't quite what occurred. It really sounds like something that bit off more than it could chew, and really got scared of the human and ran off."
Source: www.mcclatchydc.com
Constable painting The Lock up for auction - BBC News
What would you pay for The Lock? The BBC asked members of the public
John Constable's The Lock is expected to become one of the most expensive British paintings ever when it is sold at Christie's in London later.
The depiction of rural life in Suffolk is tipped to fetch up to £25 million.
Its owner, Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, said it was "very painful" to sell the 1824 masterpiece but had to because she had "no liquidity".
The work has been housed in Madrid's Bornemisza Museum, one of whose board members has resigned in protest.
Museum trustee Sir Norman Rosenthal criticised the Baroness, known as Tita, for putting one of its prize exhibits up for sale.
In his resignation letter, the former exhibitions director of London's Royal Academy said the decision "represents a moral shame on the part of all those concerned, most especially on the part of Tita".
Constable's six large canvases depicting the area around Flatford Mill in Suffolk changed the course of art.
Pictures such as The Lock might seem a bit traditional now, but in 1824 the artist's use of colour, expressive brushstrokes and contemporary subject was radical.
While The Lock hung in the annual exhibition at the Royal Academy, the Hay Wain - another painting from the series - was being shown at the Paris Salon.
Charles X gave it a gold medal, while artists Théodore Géricault and Eugene Delacroix responded by changing the way they approached painting.
Their Constable-inspired innovations led directly to Impressionism and the birth of modern art.
If it fetches its expected price, The Lock will become one of the five most expensive Old Masters ever sold at auction.
The top price of £49.5m was reached in 2002 by Sir Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents.
A former Miss Spain, the Baroness is the fifth wife and widow of Swiss industrialist Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.
The Lock was part of the huge private art collection he left behind when he died in 2002.
While most of it was sold to Spain, 250 artworks are still in the Baroness' private collection and have been lent to the country free of charge for the past 13 years.
Announcing the sale of the Constable painting in May, the Baroness said she needed to sell because of the current economic crisis.
"It's very painful for me, but there was no other way out," she told the Spanish newspaper El Pais. "I need the money, I really need it. I have no liquidity.
"Keeping the collection here is costly to me and I get nothing in return."
Francesca Von Habsburg, the Baroness's stepdaughter and another museum board member, has also expressed disapproval over the sale.
"The baroness has shown absolutely no respect for my father and is simply putting her own finanical needs above everything else," she told The Mail on Sunday.
The top end of the art market has escaped many of the problems faced by the wider global economy, with new records consistently being set for individual artists.
Last month Joan Miro's 1927 work Peinture (Etoile Bleue) sold for more than £23.5m, a record for the Spanish painter.
In May Edvard Munch's The Scream became the most expensive art work ever sold at auction, selling for $119.9m (£74m) in New York.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
California bill would allow children to have more than two parents - msnbc.com
A bill under consideration by California lawmakers would allow children to have more than two parents.
The bill, SB 1476, introduced by Sen. Mark Leno (D) from San Francisco, amends California’s current two-parent-per-child law to allow for several of them to protect the best interests of the child.
The additional parents would have to meet a court-established definition of a parent, according to Leno.
“The bill brings California into the 21st century, recognizing that there are more than Ozzie and Harriet families today,” Leno told the Sacramento Bee.
The bill is not meant to expand the definition of who can qualify as a parent, but rather to eliminate the limit of two per child, he said.
Leno said inspiration for the bill came from a 2011 state appellate court case in which a young girl had two mothers. When one of the mothers was sent to prison and the other was hospitalized, the girl’s biological father wished to care for her.
The court, however, ruled the biological father could not be a legal guardian because of California’s current law allowing only two parents per child.
The state took custody of the child.
Leno said the law would have limited application in California and is similar to legislation already present in other states – Delaware, Maine and Pennsylvania – and the District of Columbia.
SB 1476 passed in the Senate in late May and is scheduled to be considered by the Assembly Appropriations Committee on July 9.
Groups in opposition to the legislation, such as the Association of Certified Family Law Specialists, claim the bill would create confusion in the minds of children.
For example, ACFLS President Diane Wasznicky said it would create an exception to California’s formula for child support payments.
Benjamin Lopez, a legislative analyst for the Traditional Values Coalition, also blasted Leno’s bill as a new attempt to “revamp, redefine and muddy the waters” of family structure in the drive to legalize gay marriage, he told the Sacramento Bee.
Under the proposal, families with three or more parents would share custody, financial responsibility and visitation for the child, based on a judge’s determination of each parent’s wealth and the time spent with the child.
The legislation does not place any limit on the number of recognized parents a child could have, although, Leno called the possibility of a child having five or six parents “laughable.”
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