Barn damage, missing horses lead residents to believe a mountain
lion was in the neighborhood
Morgan Hill – A possible mountain lion attack has some residents of a neighborhood in west Morgan Hill on alert.
Sycamore Drive resident Steve Kelly said he heard his dog barking about 2am. The dog never barks, he said.
Still, he was unprepared for what he learned Tuesday morning. A neighbor who keeps five horses on her property discovered the horses were gone.
“The first sign something was wrong was that the stall door was blasted off the hinges,” he said. “It was torn to pieces.”
Kelly said it appeared the horses had been spooked by something or attacked and fled the barn.
When his neighbor left the barn, Kelly said, she saw further evidence the horses panicked.
“There was an aluminum gate, totally destroyed by a horse or horses running through it,” he said. “She found the horses loose, milling around in the area. When she got them corralled, she found what looked like claw marks on the back of one of them, just above the rump.”
Kelly said he thought whether it was a mountain lion or something else, the horses were frightened by something.
“When horses get out, they don’t normally run through aluminum gates,” he said. “And the damage to the barn was amazing. It looked like a bomb went off.”
The owner of the horses, Mary Ellen Morgan, declined to comment except to say that the horses “are OK.”
Henry Coletto, wildlife deputy for the Sheriff’s Office, said contrary to popular belief, mountain lions are active year around, not only during mating season.
“They’re hunting every day for food, not just certain seasons of the year,” he said. “But 99 percent of the time, they go for wild game, deer, pigs, that kind of thing. Mountain lion attacks on horses are very rare.”
The last time mountain lions were spotted in the area was in October. Coletto said there are generally several sightings per year, but people tend to believe they are more active in the spring in summer months.
“What we do see during the winter months is a lot of domestic dog problems,” he said. “I have had several calls recently about mountain lions attacking horses, and when I get out there and look at the situation, the likelihood is that it is some sort of dog, or several dogs, that try to attack the horses. The horses get scared, they are chased around, and many times get cut up by barbed wire or the enclosure itself.”
If Morgan’s horses had been attacked by a mountain lion, Coletto said, it is likely that at least one of them would have been killed.
“Normally when a cat attacks, it makes a kill unless it is a real young cat or an old cat that can’t hunt very well anymore,” he said. “A cat, if it attacks a horse, wouldn’t go for the legs. It would attack it the same way it would a deer or an elk. Your average cat can bring down a 600-pound elk, no problem. They go for the neck and head area. They might jump on the back, but likely they would take it down, it wouldn’t survive.”
Coletto said people living in areas where there have been sightings or areas close to the hills should always protect small livestock, because they are easier prey for large cats, and be aware that mountain lions are always hunting.
