By John Owen

The Beacon

H. L. Mencken, patron saint of newspaper editors, recalled on "slow news days" at the Baltimore Sun he would rediscover a wild man in a city park, swinging from trees and chasing comely women.

The fictitious "news stories did not enhance the public safety image of Baltimore, but they sold a lot of newspapers.

The editors of the Edmonds Beacon also encounter slow news days, when Brownie field trips vie with political debates on building height limits for the Page 1 banner headline.

The editors might be tempted to discover an insane killer in Yost Park, except that readers in this state know that insane killers are given a sack lunch and sent to the Spokane County Fair.

Aha, but what about a page 1 Beacon story concerning a cougar sighting on the campus of Edmonds Woodway High School? That gets your attention, right?

Cougars are very big these days. They have been spotted in city parks, on residential streets, even on the Microsoft campus.

But you didn't know about the cougar sighting on the top of Main Street, did you?

It's not the latest cougar sighting. But it may be the first cougar sighting in the area now known as Edmonds.

The city archives report that in 1887 Samuel Holmes homesteaded on the present site of Edmonds Woodway High School. But on the first night Samuel and his wife were joined in their new tent by a hungry and persistent cougar.

We don't have to guess how that confrontation turned out.

Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were obviously Warriors. If they'd lost that first match, the EW sports teams would now be known as Cougars.

In those early years, settlers in this area also encountered bears, deer, bobcats and coyotes.

Yost Park has undergone the fewest changes in flora and fauna so if you want to turn back the clock spend an hour or more exploring the park, the changing forest and Shell Creek.

It's unlikely you'll encounter mountain beavers, opossums, moles and raccoons but they are all in residence.

You might hear a tree frog, you'll undoubtedly meet up with eastern gray squirrels and if you can hook up with some amateur or professional birders you might spot barred owls, pileated woodpeckers, flickers and towhees.

You might even glimpse a Coopers hawk.

Oh, yeah, and if you do encounter a hungry cougar grab your cell phone and place a quick call to the Edmonds Beacon.

Especially if it happens to be a slow news day.