You would think that if you plunked down $10 million for a home, including millions to buy three adjoining properties, you could count on a little freedom to roam. But then the occasional mountain lion traipses across your land and, if you are Barbara Proulx, you feel trapped, afraid to let your two young sons out by themselves because of the dangers lurking outside.
Police Chief Robert J. Brennan's cast of a mountain lion's paw. Mrs. Proulx and her husband, Tom, a founder of the software company Intuit, even have a three-hole golf course on their 10-plus acres, yet in recent months it has gotten far less use than in the past.
"I won't let my children go to the tennis court by themselves anymore," Mrs. Proulx said. She does not permit the boys, ages 9 and 11, to walk to the pool on their own, either. Her parents live in a home on her property, but "they're terrified."
"Except to come to my house," she said, "they never go outside." They are hardly the only ones in the area feeling like prisoners in multimillion-dollar homes. In recent months, there have been a few publicized mountain lion sightings up and down this peninsula just south of San Francisco, especially in the area's rural, more upscale neighborhoods, out of the reach of most people beyond venture capitalists and those made outlandishly wealthy by Silicon Valley's star companies.
Yet nowhere has this fear been more pronounced than in Atherton, the country's second-wealthiest community after Rancho Santa Fe, in Southern California. Here, largely because of the efforts of a single neighbor, vast backyards sit largely unused.
More than a matter of man versus nature, the battle over the Silicon Valley's mountain lions is pitting human against human.
|