Florida brought back its panthers. Can people live with them?

One day last year, Storm Kahealani and his sister Meadow were playing outside when they came running into the house screaming hysterically. “A panther got Daisy!” Meadow cried as her brother sobbed uncontrollably.

Daisy was a goat. She was one of three dwarf Nubians the family had brought when it moved to Florida from Washington state two months earlier. The family settled on 2 1/2 acres of slash pine, sabal palm, and palmetto scrub in a sprawling semirural housing development on the outskirts of Naples, Florida, called Golden Gate Estates. There was a fenced-in backyard for the goats.

Started in the 1950s, Golden Gate is part suburb, part Wild West. On one side lies Naples, a Gulf Coast city of sand beaches, seafront mansions, and luxury hotels. On the other side is the largest expanse of wilderness east of the Mississippi River, including Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve, and the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. Golden Gate is an early example of a Florida type: the land venture that lures outsiders into the state’s rural interior with intimations of semitropical paradise. With mile after mile of widely spaced houses, dead-end roads, drainage canals, and more woods and scrub than manicured lawn, Golden Gate is still a beacon for migrants who stream into Florida, young families and graying retirees alike, all looking for a small patch of paradise. It was perfect for goats, too.

Perfect, that is, except for the panthers. One of them had leapt the 4-foot chain-link fence into the backyard, grabbed Daisy, and dragged her toward the palms and underbrush beyond. But a hoof got caught in the fence; the panther had to abandon the animal and flee. Storm’s elder sister, Oceane, carried Daisy back into the yard, where she died. 

“It was emotionally exhausting,” says Christy Kahealani, the children’s mother.

It was not a rare encounter.