Two big mountain cats kicking back on California lawn

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/mountain-lions-sierra-madre.html

Officials are cautioning residents to be alert after two mountain lions were found early Tuesday morning sitting on the front lawn of a home in Sierra Madre.

A resident reported seeing the two cats about 12:32 a.m. in front of a house on the 600 block of Camillo Road, said Sgt. Ruben Enriquez of the Sierra Madre Police Department.

The cats were still in the yard when officers arrived, but police scared them off by turning on their sirens, he said.

(picture at link)

[FSogol]

1. K & R. Pretty cool. Bet they'd keep the feral (house) cats away. n/t

[Aerows]

7. And packs of feral dogs

This is the perfect solution to all of those owners that "can't imagine that Fido would get out and do that to people." Fido might get out and try it, but I'd imagine these guys wouldn't put up with getting savaged by somebody's dog.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. Cougars are hard on domesticated animals

and god help you if you shoot one in self defense in California.

I live out in the sticks and my neighborhood cats are cougars. Stories about some things here in my journal http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HardcoreProgressive/25

[SoCalDem]

32. HUMANS are "hard" on domesticated animals

by living in "wild" areas, and then putting their pets out there as a buffet for wolves, cougars, coyotes, bears, etc.,

[ProgressiveProfessor]

34. Which is why I do not have a dog out it the twigs where I am

The local kitties started to get a taste for them when I was fighting the OTH riders and campers. Also not home enough to be fair to one.

Also remember the near total absence of deer in CA these days...it figures in to this.

[Warpy]

2. Beautiful, aren't they?

Since they eat what most of us consider vermin, I hope the photo was snapped and they were allowed to go on their way without a call to animal control.

(I'm a crazy cat lady, I'd probably have been talking to them through my cast iron crime door)

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. police ran sirens to chase them away. Cats were allowed to go about their cat business unharmed

[Xithras]

16. No, they chased them off.

They called the police, who drove up, hit their sirens, and spooked the great cats back into the forest.

It's generally not a good idea to let mountain lions get comfortable around humans. Eventually, they'll get into trouble and end up dead. It's better to simply make them understand that humans are annoying and should be avoided.

By the way, the meal most frequently eaten by mountain lions on the urban fringe is...outdoor housecat (of either the pet or feral variety, they aren't discriminating). They're apparently fairly easy for the mountain lions to catch, are big enough to provide a decent meal, and are generally present in reasonable quantities.

Cat people are often divided on mountain lions. On one hand, they are big, beautiful cats themselves. On the other, they eat our pets.

[GReedDiamond]

46. My cat and I got lucky (esp. my cat)...

...up until a bout a year-and-a-half ago, my now 12 y.o. cat and I lived in Sierra Madre, where this mountain lion visit occurred.

My cat Chibi used to go out all the time when we lived there. The first few years from when I first took him as a street kitten from the industrial wasteland known as Vernon, CA, until he was around 5 or 6 y.o., he'd prowl Sierra Madre at night. After that, he could go out in the day, but he was confined to the house at sunset until the next day.

Sierra Madre is an amazing place, it's very "Mayberry." It is the only Los Angeles area community I know of without any traffic lights, fast food chain outlets, mini-malls, etc. I love it there.

Since we moved (just 5 minutes to the east, to Old Town Monrovia), he's adapted well to being an indoor cat.

Edited for typo.

[Dreamer Tatum]

3. That is only AWESOME. nt

[Aerows]

4. Holy cow

A pair of 150-200 lbs. Mountain Lions camped out on your front lawn is... disturbing. Though honestly, we've had encounters with alligators, here, and they aren't much better.

I'll bet they keep the pit bull population in check, though.

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. they are big ones.

[Aerows]

8. Absolutely beautiful, though

They look like they are just relaxing LOL.

[truebrit71]

12. No doubt..

...but a little disconcerting if you trip over them on your way out to pick up the paper in the morning..

[Xithras]

20. I'd rather deal with a mountain lion than an alligator.

Attacks on adult humans by mountain lions are extremely rare, because mountain lions typically prefer prey on animals smaller than them. Human children are at some risk, but a mountain lions, even one with kittens, will usually just walk away when approached by an adult human. Nearly all instances of mountain lion attacks on adult humans have involved cats that were injured and starving. It's not a normal behavior for them.

An adult alligator, on the other hand, will attack nearly anything that wanders close to the water. As the alligator tour guy in Florida put it, "They ain't picky."

[Aerows]

22. No they aren't

and they are unpredictable. I went to work one morning and there was an alligator sunning itself in front of the building. Do you think I got out of the car, hoping I could get inside without it noticing me? Oh hell no. I sat in the car and waited until animal control showed up. One idiot started throwing rocks at it. That was really smart. He had to get back in his truck, and the gator just got even closer to the door.

I don't need to go to work that badly. This was when I lived in Florida. They also had to get a pest control guy to remove a nest of rattlesnakes.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

36. In most places you can shoot a gator if need, cougars not so much

[patrick t. cakes]

9. typical cats

actin like they own the place :)

[Aerows]

11. LOL!

You're right :rofl:

[truebrit71]

10. Bloody hell those are some big cats!!

I'm sure that they will wind up getting shot...you know, for safety's sake...:sarcasm:

[Liberal_in_LA]

14. "police scared them off by turning on their sirens"

[Aerows]

15. Nah, ran off by police sirens

I believe they are an endangered species and can't be shot if they haven't been directly responsible for harming a person.

[Xithras]

25. Not exactly correct.

Mountain lions were nearly extinct in California by the early 1970's and were protected from nearly all threats. As it turns out, these things reproduce pretty quickly and by 1990 the populations had returned to sustainable levels, which removed the cats from both state and federal ESA protections. Because of fears that they'd just be exterminated again, the Sierra Club put a proposition on the ballot in 1990, which the voters approved, that banned the sport hunting of mountain lions anywhere in the state.

While sport hunting was outlawed, it is still legal to shoot them if they are stalking or attacking your pets, children, or are in a place where they can't be easily trapped and are a potential threat to health and safety. They wander into urban areas and end up shot on a fairly regular basis (so regular that it rarely makes the news anymore). The only legal standard is that you must demonstrate that the cat was either 1) an immediate threat to the health or safety of humans or domestic animals, or 2) that it was a serious potential threat, and that there were no non-lethal alternatives that could have been employed (e.g., you're alone on a remote trail, a big cat starts stalking you at a distance, you have no cellphone to call for help, and the warning shot from your handgun doesn't scare it off).

The law doesn't ban killing them, but it strikes a balance by forcing the shooter to prove that there was an actual reason for doing so (and "OMIGOD, it's a mountain lion! EEEEK!" isn't a valid reason).

[Marrah_G]

17. holy shit

I don't know if I would ever step out the door again if I saw that on the lawn. Mountain lions = scary because you never see them coming.....

[shanti]

47. i know!

the photo sent shivers down my spine. :scared: i wonder if pepper spray deters them......

[joeybee12]

18. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!

Magnificent animals...has it been very dry? I know coyotes are seen more often during dry periods because they need to go farther for food...wonder if that's the case here or if the cats know they own the whole damn place!

[hunter]

19. I hope nobody is feeding them...

... that would make them much more dangerous than they already are.

But it wouldn't surprise me if some moron is tossing them steaks.

Heh, watch this, hold my beer...

[Brother Buzz]

26. I suspect nobody is intentionally feeding them...

but it wouldn't take a rocket surgeon to snoop around the area and make the connection between the dearth of small pets and an unusually high number of lost pet flyers plastered to the power poles in the area.

You know what I mean, Vern?

[Auntie Bush]

21. There are sandbags around the house. The cats must have lost their habitat due to floods.

Poor things! :cry: Hope no idiot tries to kill them.

[Liberal_in_LA]

24. Those aren't sandbags, they are terra cotta stones surrounding a garden.

[nichomachus]

23. Another way to look at it

Is that some stupid human built a house on the cat's lawn.

[AtomicKitten]

27. They are gorgeous and I'm glad - for once - they weren't killed by overanxious cops.

[Megahurtz]

44. Exactly.

That is a relief for once.

[sinkingfeeling]

28. Magnificent creatures. Great picture. They've been out of work for awhile and thought they'd get

jobs as lawn ornaments!

[Liberal_in_LA]

29. They do kinda look like xmas deer ornaments

[SteveM]

30. There has been a big increase in human/lion population...

Especially since sport hunting was banned. The result is an increase in killing "problem" cats:

"Even in cougar-friendly California, however, there are limits to interspecies goodwill. Hunters note that an average of 100 'problem' cougars are killed each year in California -- about twice the number killed annually by hunters before the 1972 ban."

(and)

"Beier, the Arizona researcher, said he wouldn't expect hunting to noticeably reduce the number of cougar attacks unless the killing reached a level not allowed since the early 1960s, when bounties were paid for dead cougars.

"Even that drastic step, unlikely given today's sympathy for predators, would not stop the march of homes into the West's wild hills nor divert the flood of visitors into the region's parks."

(and this rather do-or-die outlook...)

Collins said he likes wildlife, but he values the safety of his children more. He'd like to see Washington rescind its new ban on hunting cougars with hounds.

" 'You either control the population of cougars or start killing humans,' Collins said. 'There's not enough room for both of us to survive.'"

http://www.igorilla.com/gorilla/animal/cougar_attacks_increasing.html

_________
Other species are increasing their populations, notably black bears. In states where black bear hunting is prohibited, there is increasing pressure to resume hunts.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

35. And a near total loss of the deer herds

When the CA ban first went into effect, the cat numbers zoomed. Lots of food, no predators resulted in a larger population of cats. When the deer ran out, then there were humans and domesticated animals including livestock. Many remember the attack on the jogger and the classic picture of the cat stalking her. Eventually Malthus kicked in and the big cat population dropped down to long term sustainable levels.

What amazes me is the city types who have no clue how dangerous they are. Post from my journal where I discuss some of my interactions with them: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HardcoreProgressive/25

I know the local CA DFG bubbas reasonably well and allow access to my property as an easy transition to the land behind me, but if I had to shoot a big cat, it would take the triple S approach.

[RebelOne]

37. Believe me, the loss of deer herds was probably due to human predators. n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

39. Not what DFG and everyone else said at the time and since

When the cats were not longer hunted, they grew without limit until they ran out of food supply and then found others

[SteveM]

40. I wish you had data for that...

Generally, deer populations are more affected by drought, habitat disruption, predation by non-humans. Human hunters are hard-pressed to even "keep up" with deer populations in most areas. Do you have some information which suggests that hunting or poaching is causing this?

"Experts tell us a lion kills one deer every 9 to 14 days. (Information compiled from U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wildlife Services, San Antonio, Texas, and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Helena, Montana) And in some areas, it has been found that a lion kills as many as two deer per week, especially in hot weather."

http://www.aws.vcn.com/mountain_lion_fact_sheet.html

In other words, a single mountain lion kills 40+ deer per year; most human hunters fail in their endeavors. Those who succeed usually take only 1 deer per year.

update for citation.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

42. I will ask the DFG guy next time I see him

It is certainly what was widely perceived then and now. I know they keep herd estimates and have for years. Big cat population I am not so sure about.

[SteveM]

50. So much of herd depredation by humans was due to market hunting...

With the demise of the market, poaching (usually small-scale) is the chief abuse of hunting. Texas has had for some years a deer herd population of 4 million, and even in the best of times (i.e. weather), hunters were a significant factor in slowing herd growth land unsustainability was achieved. Die-offs occurred nevertheless due to drought and stripping of vegetation.

[SoCalDem]

31. When humans encroach into THEIR territory, this stuff happens

and humans provide a delicious buffet of yard pets and "free-range" kitties. They also provide water holes to entice them, and even cushy grass or even comfier upholstered outdoor furniture.

"If you build it, they will come"

50 years ago, wild animals roamed that land.. It's still in their instinctual GPS..

[begin_within]

33. They can come guard my house!

[DainBramaged]

38. Ex-model who ate husband's body parts still a threat, D.A. says

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


next story down

[Brigid]

41. Absolutely magnificent cats.

I hope they learn to steer clear of humans in the future, or there is sure to be trouble. :(

[JBoy]

43. Cougars in LA. Ho hum... Wait, what?

[greytdemocrat]

45. Kool Kats!!!! nt

[shanti]

48. wild hogs too

they are getting out of control in many places and have a vicious bite. a hunter was attacked in the north bay last weekend by one.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

49. Those tend to be good eating

big cats not so much

[yella_dawg]

51. Wild hogs aren't a problem.

Wild hogs exist everywhere man has kept domestic hogs, or, everywhere. The problem is sport hunters introducing Russian wild hogs. The cross is aggressive, viscous, and they breed like rabbits. We have a serious problem in Texas (tens of billions in damage annually). They've been known to munch on pets, and too frequently, people. There was a Russian hog release not fifteen miles from where I type this. The release occurred in the early to mid eighties. This strain has spread at least as far as Mississippi, New Mexico, and Illinois.