In Chile, however, it destroys many young horses and
cattle, owing probably to the scarcity of other quadrupeds: I
heard, likewise, of two men and a woman who had been thus killed.
It is asserted that the puma always kills its prey by springing on
the shoulders, and then drawing back the head with one of its paws,
until the vertebrae break: I have seen in Patagonia the skeletons
of guanacos, with their necks thus dislocated.
The puma, after eating its fill, covers the carcass with many large
bushes, and lies down to watch it. This habit is often the cause of
its being discovered; for the condors wheeling in the air, every
now and then descend to partake of the feast, and being angrily
driven away, rise all together on the wing. The Chileno Guaso then
knows there is a lion watching his prey--the word is given--and men
and dogs hurry to the chase. Sir F. Head says that a Gaucho in the
Pampas, upon merely seeing some condors wheeling in the air, cried
"A lion!" I could never myself meet with any one who pretended to
such powers of discrimination. It is asserted that if a puma has
once been betrayed by thus watching the carcass, and has then been
hunted, it never resumes this habit; but that having gorged itself,
it wanders far away.
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