A mountain lion has forced residents of Santa Monica and their tiny pets indoors as officials try to track the wild cat.
The Santa Monica Police Department descended on the residential area of 14th and Montana Friday morning after someone allegedly saw the animal roaming the area.
“Out of an abundance of caution, officers are in the area assessing the report and working with appropriate wildlife resources. At this time, there are no reported injuries,” a tweet from the department said.
The mountain lion was first located sleeping in a residential backyard, and has not moved from that location, a SMPD spokesperson told The California Post. Officers are waiting on further assistance from wildlife fish and game officers.
Hey, humans can be quite tasty, especially those that eat only the healthiest, most organic food, like everyone in Santa Monica.
Meanwhile, in my neck of the woods:
Those now struggling with the consequences of the 1990 vote to ban hunting the big cats and the lack of robust protections from the state wildlife agency are growing angrier and less accepting of the puma-centered solutions being proposed.
“A mountain lion that is constantly on my parents’ deck, feet away from the sliding glass door, my parents are in their eighties, yes, I’m scared every freaking day,” Dreu Murin, whose family has lived on a ranch in Susanville since 1900, told The Times.
He accused the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), the agency responsible for managing the predators, of failing to do its job.
…The increasingly contentious debate encapsulates the tension between urban and rural communities in California, with Murin arguing city-dwellers have no idea what life is like for farmers.
“If they think it’s so easy to live around them, let’s relocate some lions to parks in Los Angeles and San Francisco,” he said. “Let them be around them and see how unpredictable these animals are. Because I guarantee if their cat or their son got killed, they’d change their tune.”
Shoot, shovel and shut up.
At any given moment, the urge to sing ‘the lion sleeps tonight’ is just a whim away
A whim away
A whim away
A whim away
Heh.
