The call came at 10:15. One of my wardens.

"Bring the kit. We've got a lion in town."

Now the heeler sisters and I had just gotten home from here less than an hour ago. And took the time for some cereal, the morning papers and some Buffy. And I was just now preparing to clean up and start the rest of the day.

As in, I am standing naked as a jaybird in the bedroom when he called.

"Okay, but I'm just getting ready to shower. It'll be a little while."

Seventeen minutes later I'm on the road. No heelers on this trip. Just the tranq kit, rifle, air pistol and the jab pole.

You never know exactly how these thing are going to work out, and which tool will be best. So you bring 'em all.

As I make the ten minute drive into town, I think about the circus with the last lion in town. This one is in a residential area, at the extreme west end of town.I wonder what the crowds will be like.

There has got to be a better way of handling this. I make mental notes to suggest to the SO and PD that all "critter in town" traffic go by cell phone, rather than the airwaves. I switch on the local radio station to see what they have to say.

When the bear was in town in my first spring here, the radio station rebroadcast all of our vehicle radio traffic for the whole town to hear (apparently a major FCC violation... they got in trouble for that one). But produced a major traffic jam on the interstate as everyone came out to watch and listen. But today the radio station has nothing to say about a lion.

I go past the hospital, headed to the street where the lion was reported to be in a back yard.

No lights, no emergency vehicles, no people. Just a guy on his front walk wondering what I'm doing in the neighborhood.

Found a rig from our outfit, but it's the warden two districts to the east. Empty, except for horses in the trailer. Call for the local warden. And get the Patrol supervisor instead. They're west of the street. But no connection from where I am to where they are. Back out of the neighborhood, past the hospital and then north to the Methodist Church, where the red fox had settled last winter. And there's the warden's truck, and a patrol car.

Empty.

More talk on the radio. Lion gone. They're afoot in the hills beyond town, be back in 10.

There's a herd of pronghorn bedded on one hillside. When they jump up, I know where the warden and patrolman are. And they soon come into view. I wait.

A single buck antelope was bedded on another hillside, above the main canyon, and now he's up, staring down below. The likely escape route of the lion.

Our distant compadre arrives first, from patroling the back yards. Been hearing him on the radio for years, and we finally get to meet. He's ferrying horses to the southwest corner, and needs to hit the road.

Thanks for the help...

So where's the circus? The crowds of people, and crowds of police to control the crowds of people? Well, the RP was a patrolman's wife, who relayed the report by phone. And the Patrol kept all communications by phone.

Great minds think alike.

But no lion.

But it has been here too often. The Methodists, at the very edge of town, run a daycare. The lion was here screaming away two nights ago. The Patrolman reports folks in the neighborhood closer to the hills have been seeing it off and on for two weeks.

Thanks for letting us know.