Video: Mountain Lion Captured after Visiting LA School
OutdoorHub Reporters 04.19.16
Game wardens captured and relocated a 90-pound mountain lion after the cat wandered onto the campus of a Los Angeles high school around lunchtime on Friday. Students of John F. Kennedy High School were told to remain in their classrooms after the cougar was spotted prowling nearby. The arrival of police officers provoked the cat to flee into a residential area, where it was cornered and eventually captured by wildlife officials.
“I came around to our side gate. And I could see that there was a mountain lion right out front. It was pretty interesting,” Cody Romero, a resident that caught the cougar on video, told CBS News. “As I saw the video, I was thinking, wow, now I’m in the valley right now. There are mountains around and I guess the lion made it through.”
Game wardens tranquilized the large predator and confirmed that it was not P-22, a popular mountain lion that lived in nearby Griffith Park and was suspected of mauling a koala in the Los Angeles Zoo last month. Instead, the cat captured on Friday was 3-year-old that had likely also traversed the Los Angeles’ dangerous freeways to reach the school. Officials are unsure where the mountain lion came from, but decided to relocate it to the wilderness.
“He’s on his way back to the Santa Susana Mountains, in what we call suitable habitat,” Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Associated Press.
Despite its matted fur and skinny frame, veterinarians say the cougar also appears to be relatively healthy.
You can watch a video of the mountain lion below.
