Warning: Some readers may find images and video distressing
Firefighters are well known for their cat-rescuing skills. But members of San Bernardino County Fire department faced a bigger challenge than your average trapped tabby when they were called to a home in California on Saturday, Feb. 16.
Arriving at the house in Hesperia, San Bernardino County, they found a large cougar, or mountain lion, sitting about 50 feet in the air in a tree in the backyard.
The homeowner was gardening when they became aware of the cougar, authorities said.
Staff from the California Department of Fish & Wildlife tranquilized the big cat before firefighters approached it using a ladder, the fire department said in a Facebook post.
#SBCoFD & California Department of Fish & Wildlife Crews Rescue Mountain Lion in City of Hesperia. San Bernardino…
Gepostet von San Bernardino County Fire am Samstag, 16. Februar 2019
It was then lowered from the tree in a harness, assessed by wildlife experts and released back into the wild.
“It is common for young mountain lions to wander outside what some would consider normal habitat in an attempt to establish their territory,” said Kevin Brennan, a biologist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Mountain lion up in a tree in an #Azusa neighborhood, was just removed @FOXLA pic.twitter.com/mzcUSA7Gek
— Lisette_g (@lisetteg) April 7, 2017
About 80 miles from Los Angeles, the town of Hesperia sits in the Mojave Desert and is bordered to the south by the San Bernardino Mountains.
While cougar attacks on humans are rare, the animal presented a danger to residents, warden Rick Fischer said.
“Leaving the lion in the tree would not have been safe for the community,” Fischer said. “Once the lion regained consciousness we ensured he safely returned to his suitable habitat.”
Fewer than 20 people have been killed in North America by mountain lions in more than 100 years, officials said after that incident.
Man Wrestles Mountain Lion to Death With Bare Hands
Earlier this month, a runner in Colorado strangled a mountain lion with his bare hands after it attacked him.
On Feb. 14, the mysterious jogger was revealed as Travis Kauffman, 31, who described how he had rolled with a 40-pound cougar for 10 minutes in the pine needles and dirt after it launched an attack at his face, clamped its jaws onto his wrist and refused to let go.
“It was going up toward my face so I threw up my hands to kind of block my face, at which point it grabbed onto my hand and wrist and from there it started to claw at my face and neck. And that’s when kind of my fear response turned into more of a fight response,” Kauffman said.
Kaufmann tried to throw it off, but the force threw both of them off balance, off the trail, with the mountain lion still gripping his wrist in its teeth.
“From there it was just like a wrestling match,” Kauffman said.
But lingering in the back of Kauffman’s mind was a greater fear—the fear that the juvenile’s much bigger mother might appear. Female mountain lions can reach over three times the weight of the one that had attached itself to Kauffman’s wrist. Luckily for Kaufmann, no adult lion came to the aid of the juvenile.
At one point, with his free hand, he was able to grab a rock.
“I knew with two pretty good blows to the back of the head (and) it didn’t release, that I was probably going to have to do something a little more drastic,” he said. “I was able to kind of shift my weight and get a foot on its neck” until it succumbed.
“Once you get a cat on its back, its back legs go crazy, so I was pretty wary of the back claw,” he said.
Colorado Man, Travis Kauffman, Survives Mountain Lion Attack
This is Travis Kauffman. This is his story of how he survived a mountain lion attack.
Gepostet von Colorado Parks and Wildlife am Donnerstag, 14. Februar 2019
“It finally stopped moving and then the jaws opened and I was able to kind of scramble back up the hill and get the heck out of Dodge.”
Kauffmann said he was screaming his best “barbarian yell” but throughout the encounter, the big cat remained eerily silent.
“I was just thankful that he had his eyes and his fingers and all his parts, and it didn’t look as bad as I maybe would have thought that it could,” his girlfriend, Annie Bierbower told reporters.
According to the CPW, the lion weighed around 35 to 40 pounds. Body fat levels indicated it was hungry, but not starving. Adult male mountain lions can reach 150 pounds in weight.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2019 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
The Epoch Times reporter Simon Veazey contributed to this report.
