After chasing a house cat Tuesday afternoon, a
”
very large
”
mountain lion laid down in the shade next to a residence near
the Chesbro Reservoir northwest of Morgan Hill.
Morgan Hill – After chasing a house cat Tuesday afternoon, a “very large” mountain lion laid down in the shade next to a residence near the Chesbro Reservoir northwest of Morgan Hill.
The big cat rested there until Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Deputy Gerhard Wallace approached.
Then it “just nonchalantly sauntered away,” Wallace said. “He certainly didn’t run. This cat was not confrontational, it was complacent, it was tolerant of people.”
Deputies responded to a 911 call from Paula Pankow, a resident of Old Oak Glen Road about 2pm.
“I saw it chasing my cat, Sammy,” she said. “It chased it down that bank, and I couldn’t see Sammy anymore.”
Moments later, Pankow said she went looking for her cat, thinking Sammy had slipped under the porch or into the crawlspace of her neighbor’s house, just across the street and down an embankment from her home.
“I didn’t see Sammy, but I wanted to look, in case he was bloody, or I needed to take him to the vet,” she said.
What she didn’t expect to see when she looked down the embankment, about 15 feet from where she was standing, was the mountain lion – which Wallace estimated weighed 120 pounds – curled up in the shade next to the home.
“I had to run get my camera,” she said. “I’m a city girl, only been out here two years, and I’m still getting used to it,” referring to the frequent sightings of deer, wild turkeys, bobcats and now a mountain lion.
After taking several pictures of the animal and calling 911, Pankow and a friend tried to scare the animal away, banging pots and pans and blowing car horns. Had the big cat remained, deputies would have fired on it with rubber bullets to scare it away, unless it threatened people, Santa Clara County Sheriff Deputy Dale Unger said.
But rubber bullets turned out to be unnecessary, Wallace said. The cougar walked away.
In August 2006, a mountain lion was killed by residents with a permit in northeast Morgan Hill after it killed four goats and mauled five others.
There were two mountain lions killed in Santa Clara County in 2000, two in 2001, four in 2002, four in 2003, one in 2004 and two in 2005, according to the Department of Fish and Game’s Web site.
Since 1890, there have been 13 mountain lion attacks on people in California involving 15 people. Six of those people died, including the two that died in Morgan Hill in 1909, though the deaths were attributed to rabies contracted as a result of the attack and not the attack itself.
There have been no recorded attacks on humans in Morgan Hill since 1909.
“They have always been out there,” said Tamara Clark-Shear, spokeswoman for Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department.
“We have interpretative signage instructing the public how to live with the wildlife in the parks,” she said. “We post smaller signs when we have specific sightings.”
Meanwhile, Pankow expected Sammy to return home when he calms down.
