Here's an cougar story for you.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/01/MNV41F6FIP.DTL&type=printable
Cougar killed near Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
(08-31) 22:04 PDT BERKELEY -- Berkeley police shot and killed a mountain lion early Tuesday as it roamed a neighborhood around the city's famous Gourmet Ghetto for at least an hour, leaping over fences from one backyard to another.
Three officers shot and killed the 100-pound adult female with rifles and a shotgun shortly before 3:30 a.m. outside a home on the 1600 block of Walnut Street, just blocks from Chez Panisse restaurant, the flagship Peet's Coffee store, the Cheese Board Collective and other businesses along busy Shattuck Avenue in North Berkeley.
Residents speculated that the mountain lion had been hunting for deer, which are commonly seen in the area. But Patrick Foy, a state Department of Fish and Game warden, said it was unclear what the cougar was doing in a residential neighborhood, a baguette's throw from the birthplace of California cuisine. There were no signs that it had killed any domestic pets, he said.
The nearest open space is Tilden Regional Park, more than a mile east of where the cougar was killed.
'Very odd'
"We found no reason why it should have been there," Foy said. "It's a very odd situation. It's just very unusual."
Authorities plan to perform a necropsy on the animal.
Police decided to shoot the cougar because it was jumping into the backyards of residential homes, near where night-shift workers could be coming and going and homeless people were sleeping, Berkeley police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said.
"It would be irresponsible not to consider this a public-safety threat," Kusmiss said.
Dana Michaels, a Fish and Game spokeswoman, agreed that it was a prudent decision to kill a mountain lion running loose "in the heart of Berkeley."
"That's right in line with our policy," Michaels said. "If an animal becomes a threat to public safety, you do what you have to, to remove it. It's nice if you can remove it without killing it, but that wasn't the case apparently this time."
Spotted in parking lot
The incident began at 2:13 a.m. when someone called 911 to report that a mountain lion was in the parking lot of the former Elephant Pharmacy near the corner of Shattuck and Cedar Street. The building is now vacant.
When officers arrived, the big cat ran east on Cedar and then south on Spruce Street, where it jumped a fence and entered the playground of All Souls Episcopal Church, Kusmiss said.
It then jumped another fence into the backyard of a home on the 1600 block of Spruce and moved back west to Oxford Street. But it didn't stay there long, and hopped more fences before turning up another block to the west, in the backyard of a home on Walnut.
Two officers with .223-caliber rifles shot the lion, but it's unclear whether they hit the cat. The mountain lion then moved into an adjoining backyard, where a third officer with a shotgun killed it.
Daniel Turman, 42, who lives on Oxford, said he saw the lion from 20 feet away shortly after it had been killed. Its eyes were closed and its mouth was partly open, he said. "It was clearly a large cat, 100 pounds and 4 to 5 feet long," Turman said. "There was no doubt in my mind that it would pose a significant threat to a human being."
Charlie Ward, 28, said she was awakened by a legion of police officers banging on her door. They told her that a mountain lion was in her backyard and asked if they could go to her deck to shoot it.
"I was kind of surprised that such a big animal would be running around a suburban street. I was sad that it had to be killed, but kind of surprised," Ward said.
Ciairra Charlesworth, 38, who described herself as a "chronic insomniac," said she was awake at 3:30 a.m. when she heard three shots fired.
She said she's seen skunks, opossums and rats on her property, but never a mountain lion.
"To have something like that happen is very scary," Charlesworth said. "It makes me think that the animal either had to be pretty sick or very hungry to come down this far, because it's so close to people."
It wasn't the first time officers in the Bay Area have killed a mountain lion in the middle of a town.
In 2004, Palo Alto police shot a cougar in a residential neighborhood far from the hills where the animals typically live. Two years later, a Fish and Game warden shot a cougar that had wandered into a Pleasanton condominium complex.
Berkeley police called Fish and Game early Tuesday, Foy said, but wardens weren't able to get there before the animal was shot.
Police on their own
Wardens have a large area to cover and it can take them a while to arrive, so local police are often on their own, Foy said.
"In the case of this mountain lion that showed up in an area that was completely unnatural for that lion to be there, hopping from one backyard to the next, running through the church playground and the parking lot, it's a threat to public safety," Foy said. "We're very supportive of Berkeley PD's action."
Game wardens have some of the same problems as local police in dealing with a large animal, Foy said.
"We have some tools that are available that most police departments don't have," Foy said, "but they're not as accessible as you might think. Our wardens don't generally carry dart guns around or large nets or that kind of thing for wildlife captures."
Fish and Game officials add that tranquilizer guns don't always have the desired effect of bringing a big cat down. Tranquilizers don't take effect for up to 30 minutes, during which the animal can continue to roam and pose a threat to people, officials say.
E-mail Henry K. Lee at
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