Watch as apex predator ‘tornadoes’ back into CO wilderness after rehabilitation
A rehabilitated apex predator that was orphaned last summer was so eager to leave captivity behind, she tornadoed out of her cage back into the Colorado wilderness, photos and video show.
The mountain lion was orphaned in June 2024, and a wildlife manager with Colorado Parks and Wildlife in Durango saved her when she was “just a kitten,” the agency said in a July 29 post on Facebook.
Durango is a town on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, about a 315-mile drive southwest from Colorado Springs.
The wildlife rehabber took her in, and she stayed in rehabilitation for just over a year before her release — roughly the same amount of time she would have spent with her mother in the wild, officials said.
“This mountain lion spent the year at the Pauline S. Schneegas Wildlife Foundation outdoor facility where it was able to grow to the age where she could return to the wild like any other young lion that recently broke away from its mother,” officials said in the post.
A wildlife biologist tagged the cougar so the agency would be able to identify her if she were ever to cross officials’ paths again, the agency said. After the cougar was tranqualized and loaded in a cage in the bed of a pickup truck, she was given a drug to reverse the effects of the tranquilizer and “took a short ride to be released into good mountain lion habitat in southwest Colorado.”
“Watch as (district wildlife manager) Andy Brown opens the lion trap and she tornadoes out of the truck. It wasn’t the most graceful tumble out of the truck, and it caught everyone by surprise,” the agency said. “Brown has released many mountain lions over the years for CPW, and he had never seen anything quite like it. But she landed on her feet!”
Photos and a video show the mountain lion hissing, growling, pacing and lurching toward Brown as he prepares to open the cage.
“You ready?” he asks. The cougar responds with a determined hiss as he heads toward the back of the cage and pulls open the door. The mountain lion had turned to face him and rushes away from him, flying sideways out of the cage and tumbling over the open pickup truck door.
Photos show the cougar sliding backwards off the back of the truck, landing on her hind legs and launching forward toward the woods.
“Shoutout to the person filming — pretty sure their soul briefly exited their body when that lion torpedoed out,” someone said in the comments.
“While the release wasn’t the smoothest ever, it is truly good to see that this mountain lion wanted nothing to do with humans, did not associate us with food and wanted to get away from us as quickly as she could,” officials said. “This mountain lion now has a second chance to survive in the wild. ... Good luck out there to this mountain lion. We hope she thrives in the wild and becomes a successful member of the Colorado mountain lion population.”
“She’s spicy!” someone said in the comments. “I’m sure she will be fine.”
