<I>Hector del Castillo/Chieftain</I><BR>Before the Wallowa Cougars' penultimate home game of the season, against the Joseph Eagles on Feb. 9, junior Brandon Mahon (left) and senior Kainoa Delatori bring out Amos.

Before Wallowa High fans even step through the doors to the gym, a cougar will guard the entrance. Mounted atop a rocky terrain, with its cheeks curled in a ferocious manner and its left paw raised, opponents that come to mess with the Cougars will have to get by this one.

After more than six weeks of hard work, the new cougar was done but its protective casing had yet to be completed when it was shown to fans before the boys basketball game versus Joseph on Feb. 9. Still, the crowd at the final home game of the season got an early glimpse at the arrangement, which will be permanently placed in the hallway right outside the gym.

“We wanted to get it out there and let everyone see it before the season’s done,” Bob Jones, the director behind the project, said.

Next week, Jones will be picking up lexan, a protective barrier, to be placed around the cougar.

The cougar was named Amos by a vote of Wallowa students. They selected the name in honor of the famous school graduate, Amos Marsh, Jr., ’58. At Wallowa High, Marsh starred in football, basketball and track. He went onto college at Oregon State and later played professional football in Dallas and Detroit. In 1992, Marsh passed away.

Until this season, Wallowa already had a stuffed cougar, but it wasn’t school property and the owner took it away.

Once that happened, Wallowa resident Bob Jones, a former school resource officer, oversaw the reproduction of a new one. Together with local trappers, taxidermist Dan Moncrief and student Kainoa Delatori, a three-sport senior at Wallowa High, Jones completed Amos. Projects of that nature cost in upwards of $3,500.

“I saw that they already had a cougar, but it didn’t look very good,” he said. “Then, it was gone.

“Once that happened, I thought, ‘we should get a new cougar up here.'”

Jones spoke with local trapper Sonny Hagenah, and they brought the idea to the attention of other people in Lostine. Eventually, the group contacted taxidermist Dan Moncrief. Starting in December, Moncrief got Amos into good enough condition for its unveiling.

Amos measures over six feet in length and weighs over 70 pounds. When the cat was alive, it weighed in excess of 180 pounds.

Throughout the winter, Delatori labored with Moncrief on the project. The night before they were going to present it before the Wallowa community at the Feb. 9 game against Joseph, the basketball team’s guard worked on the project so late that he ended up falling asleep next to the cougar.

“It was my senior project,” Delatori said. “I wanted to do something in taxidermy, and my mentor [Moncrief] suggested that I could help with the cougar. Hunting and fishing – those are activities that I like to do, so it was nice how this just flowed in there.”