Mountain lion in downtown Santa Monica!
 

California Fish & Game killed a mountain lion early this morning near the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

http://news.yahoo.com/mountain-lion-...190528352.html

Yikes!

And...?

And wouldn't you be surprised to find this "kitty" in your backyard? :)

I'm sorry to hear they had to kill the cat. Too bad a tranquilizer didn't work.

It is hard to imagine how that cat got all the way into Santa Monica near 3rd Street. I wonder if we will find out more to the story, like it was kept as a pet by someone and it escaped?

It's not far from the Santa Monica mountains to downtown Santa Monica, and there are known numbers of mountain lions in the hills. It's less than 5 miles for sure, and mountain lions apparently have a range of 100 square miles. A few months ago, another lion was hit by a car while trying to cross the 405 freeway.

There is some controversy arising today that authorities were perhaps too aggressive at the beginning of the encounter which meant they were attempting to tranquilize a really wound-up animal who tried to make a run for it. IMO, it's hard to second-guess the F&G and police in this situation, but I feel bad for the lion.

Are they sure it wasn't some old cougar prowling for surfer boys? Just kidding, how appalling.

What's apalling to all city slickers is how many young deer, elk and Rocky Mountain sheep these lions can eat, and their population has exploded lately.