An Ode to Hollywood's P-22
Earlier this week, wildlife officials here in Southern California captured an aging celebrity, a 12-year-old mountain lion whom we’ve named P-22. The big cat is a much-revered figure in the land of the famous, having survived a delicate cohabitation with humans amid the coastal woodlands of the Hollywood Hills. He was captured because he has turned to predation on Chihuahuas, a sign that he is getting too old and too tired to hunt deer.
This morning, I read that P-22 will not return to the wild. He is underweight, and his coat is thinning, and he has an injury to his right eye, “likely,” the Los Angeles Times reported, “the result of recent vehicular trauma.” He has been treated with antibiotics and will undergo a CT scan, and, depending on health assessments, will either be euthanized and held in captivity. Either way, his run as a wild thing is at an end.
As an environmental journalist, I know that we should not make too much a symbol of what are called charismatic megafauna. But it is hard not to see P-22’s ignoble capture and impending death or imprisonment as symbolic of a greater diminishment. As we humans hurl through the twenty-first century, devouring wild spaces, wiping out birds and bees, parching rivers, and bleaching reefs, news of a specific loss, like that of P-22, hits hard.
The key, I think, is knowing what to do with this kind of gut-punch. We must understand these moments as calls to action, to do better. We must think harder about our relationships to our wild kin, and do what work we can, wherever we can, to keep them. This is how we honor P-22. We should remember him roaming the dark hills of Griffith Park, beyond the city lights, forever free in our collective imagination, which needs all the wild it can hold.
Brian Calvert
Associate Editor, Earth Island Journal
PS: The Journal will be taking a holiday break from December 26 through the New Year. We wish you all a happy and restorative year end.
Photo of Griffith Park, Los Angeles: Boqiang Liao
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