Well-known mountain lion killed Chihuahua walking on leash, California officials say
A mountain lion famous for stalking residential areas around Griffith Park in California is the cat responsible for killing a family’s chihuahua, officials said.
The National Park Service confirmed it was the cat known as P-22 in a post on Facebook. It happened the night of Nov. 9 on a residential street near the Hollywood Reservoir in Hollywood Hills, officials said.
The attack was caught on video, KTLA reported. The footage shows P-22 creeping up on the dogs and the person walking them from behind before lunging at Piper, the chihuahua.
P-22 is one of the mountain lions the National Park Service has been studying in the region, officials said. The agency strives to learn as much as possible about the lions to conserve their presence in the park.
The dog’s owner told KTLA he doesn’t blame P-22 — he was just doing what mountain lions do and hunting for food, he said.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to P-22,” Daniel Jimenez told the outlet. “I just want people to be safe out there so that nothing like this happens again.”
Park officials say it isn’t likely, but it also isn’t impossible.
“There is no evidence that preying on pets is related to an increased chance of attack on a person,” officials said. That is true of mountain lions and “other urban carnivores such as coyotes,” and while attacks on humans are “exceedingly rare” they do occur.
The agency is not aware of mountain lions attacking leashed pets in the Los Angeles area, but mountain lion studies in Colorado and southern California suggest it’s happened in those areas at least once.
On Thursday, Nov. 10, a mountain lion attacked a teen girl who was walking her dog in suburban Reno, Nevada, McClatchy News previously reported. The girl managed to fight the cougar off and both she and her Great Pyrenees got away with scratches and scrapes.
When people and cougars encounter each other, it’s often in suburbs where the city has pushed into their territory.
While the attack in California was uncommon, it also wasn’t uncalled for, wildlife officials said.
“There are also several factors that indicate P-22’s behavior was not atypical during this incident,” officials said.
Officials elaborated that mountain lions are more active in the dark. The attack “occurred in the evening, in full darkness, an hour and a half after sunset.”
They’re “opportunistic hunters,” and though their most important prey are deer, they’ll hunt “a variety of animals when the opportunity arises.”
P-22 is still hunting deer and coyotes in his home range of Griffith Park. “We know that he killed a large buck in the park just a couple of weeks before this incident,” officials said.
Mountain lions usually avoid urban areas and they’re scared of humans. They’ll still sometimes move through residential areas near their natural habitat.
“P-22 did not attack the dog walker or show any aggressive behavior towards him,” the agency said.
It’s not uncommon for mountain lions to hunt domestic dogs and pets who were “off leash, lost, or wandering” both in urban and suburban areas of Colorado, Washington, and south of Los Angeles, officials said.
They recommended pet owners who live near mountain lion territory to protect their pets by walking them on standard-length leashes, “especially between dusk and dawn when predators are most active.” It’s important to be alert and aware of your surroundings when you’re outside with pets, they wrote.
“If you do encounter a mountain lion while walking with a pet, keep pets close, make yourself as large as possible, make noise, and do not run,” the agency said.
This story was originally published November 22, 2022 at 11:09 AM.
