Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well, the good news is that the lion stayed put. And hid himself. We saw one, under a picnic table at a park, I think he was trying to catch the gophers that lived there, waiting for food droppings. he ran off when he saw us.
It's not the cougar you see that you need to worry about.
It's the one you don't see.
But there are two sides to that. All the years I have been mountain biking, I've seen every other large-ish predator it's possible to see around here, many times. Coyote, foxes, bobcats. I enjoy those sightings.
Never have seen a mountain lion even though I know they are out there and trail cams pick them up regularly.
As long as I don't see them, it's all good. But if I ever do see one, I'm definitely going to be unnerved while biking for a long time, maybe forever.
Just saw a YouTube video of a show called “I Survived”. It was about a cyclist who was attacked by a mountain lion. It tore half of her face off!
Oh, yeah, that was Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park. We live a few miles from there and I used to ride a loop through the park all the time. Then I had my first baby and stopped riding for a while, and a few years later that attack happened.
It was quite a story. If I recall correctly, a woman was jumped by a mountain lion while she was riding her bike up the trail. A couple of other mountain bikers came up behind her and threw rocks at the lion until it ran away. The woman's face was really messed up and frankly, she was lucky to survive. I think she is also the one I remember as saying it felt like she was jumped by ten men at the same time; there was absolutely no way for her to fight back.
The rangers wanted to find the animal because if a mountain lion attacks or seriously threatens a human, which is not its natural prey, it is considered mentally unstable and is destroyed. They sent out a helicopter to survey the area where the attack happened, and while looking out of the helicopter, the team spotted a place off in the brush where it looked like the hillside had been disturbed. They sent a ground team to investigate, and they found the partially eaten body of a man. Several hours before, the lion had killed him while he was hiking or riding alone, dragged him off, snacked on his internal organs, and stashed the rest of the body away for later (which also goes to show that it really was a disturbed lion--it wasn't even hungry when it attacked the woman).
Anyway, they did eventually find and kill the lion, and the woman recovered and had plastic surgery to fix her face, though she still has scars of course. More recently I read a follow-up article about her; she married after this incident and had a child and is doing well. But, good grief. I was MORE than a little unnerved when I thought about how often I rode all alone on that same trail. Late in the afternoon, near dusk, no less.
Mountain lion attacks on humans are very rare. One, we simply don't fit their prey profile. This is not surprising. Felines are believed to have crossed to the Americas approximately eight million years ago. For much less than 1% of their evolutionary history has their been a species of bipedal megafauna sharing their habitat. Two, that particular megafauna tends to be very lethal. Even in pre-Columbian times, stone weapons and coordinated actions via complex language allowed humans to fight back in ways that deer and other prey never could. In more recent centuries, firearms are absolutely lethal. A mountain lion that attacks a human is a dead mountain lion. Natural selection chooses mountain lions that are disinclined to attack people.
It wasn't stalking. If anything, it was hiding. Wise move, kitty.
I'd be more disturbed if I lived in that home; that it could be out there any time I stepped outside the door.
I'll bet it's a pet of the rich and famous.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Several hours before, the lion had killed him while he was hiking or riding alone, dragged him off, snacked on his internal organs, and stashed the rest of the body away for later (which also goes to show that it really was a disturbed lion--it wasn't even hungry when it attacked the woman). 
