At 7:20 a.m. on Nov. 25, Laguna Lake resident Natalie Davis settled down on the couch with a cup of coffee when she heard her dog’s frantic barking. She ran to the window and saw a mountain lion chasing her dog.
“So when I saw him [the mountain lion] chasing the dog, I immediately put my hands up on my sliding glass door like up above my head and began banging on it,” Davis said.
Davis, who lives in SLO’s Laguna Lake area, said it wasn’t the first time a mountain lion had visited her backyard. She first spotted the animal walking near her fence on Nov. 21.
“And that [incident] obviously made us super cautious, but we knew that there have been so many sightings locally in San Luis recently. So we were just more careful,” Davis said. “We didn’t go out as early and we didn’t let the dog out as early.”
Now, everyone’s on high alert, including her dog.
“Our dog is acting so crazy,” Davis said. “He does like a perimeter walk around the house every time he goes outside now. He sniffs in the area that the mountain lion chased him around our swing set.”
The response of local agencies, such as the SLO Police Department and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, were “nonchalant” to her situation, Davis said.
Bob Hill, SLO city’s Sustainability and Natural Resources Official, told New Times that it’s natural for mountain lions to be in the area.
“We don’t really know exactly why mountain lions currently have been seen so often in neighborhood areas, but there’s a couple of ideas,” Hill said. “One is that with prolonged drought, a lot of the deer will come in closer to town from higher up in the hills and the mountain lions will follow the deer as prey.”
Currently, the city is working with Fish and Wildlife to monitor the mountain lion, which has been seen more than a dozen times. At this time, Fish and Wildlife biologist Brandon Swanson said they don’t have any plans to relocate or euthanize the mountain lion unless it starts showing aggressive behavior.
“Relocation isn’t ideal, because you’re moving a lion into another lion’s territory and you’re messing with everything else,” Swanson said. “You’re going to push other lions around or the lions will come back. And that puts lions at risk for getting hit by a car.”
While the department said it will continue to monitor the mountain lion’s movements, the sightings have cast a cloud of fear over the Laguna Lake neighborhood. Fewer residents walk during early morning and evening hours, Davis said.
“I respect wildlife 100 percent. I understand the argument if they were there first. But I also am a firm believer that our children are more important than wildlife. At some point, my fear is if it were to attack a child or a person when they encroach so much in residential neighborhoods,” Davis said. “I don’t want to see an animal or innocent animal killed, but I also feel in my heart that a child is more important than a mountain lion. So that’s a very fine line.” Δ
This article appears in Dec 1-11, 2022.
