Palomar Mountain News

My last post was about waking up to a Mountain Lion at our door. I’ve had many comments, and emails from concerned folks. I wrote it lightly but do want you to know that we are very concerned. That last post was pretty long so I wanted to make sure you got to the link that was at the bottom of that post. This photo is of the lion that was at our horse corral last night for about 2 minutes before turning away. Very bold and quite frightening since two of our grandkids saddled up and rode that horse yesterday.

YOU can help: be sure to report your incidents with lions. It takes less than a minute:

Click for Wildlife Info

Click to Report

We moved here in ’98 and didn’t see any lions at all our first ten years or so.  Then our first one, a few years later a second one. I’ve seen several walking along State Park Road like they were headed to the General Store for an ice cream.  We see them very often. I was glad to see the box to check to be able to take care of this very aggressive lion that was literally right under our patio roof.  We can deal with loosing cats, chickens, ducks, but loosing children is a different story. 

The Scripps Ranch 4 year old that was attacked in the middle of the day was hiking with 11 people.  So, the guidelines really don’t work in all instances: https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/child-attacked-by-mountain-lion-at-los-penasquitos-canyon-preserve?fbclid=IwAR3niA4oyq4wqjYzd8ei7aLIe56P0JTBP7Clvk_wefDsW_zgulz2k5uCM2Q

The Lion population is growing very rapidly.

 One of the Palomar photos here shows 4 lions in the same frame from a neighbor’s trail cam.  Another shows a lion dragging  off a deer with the neck in his jaws.  Our youngest grandson is about the size of the deer: https://palomarmountainnews.wordpress.com/?s=mountain+lion%27&x=0&y=0

A few years ago Fish and Game would come up and trap a lion that had killed livestock. Now they don’t. Apparently there are just too many. So when you report an incident there is a box you can check if you want to be able to defend yourselves and livestock with a ‘lethal or non-lethal’ solution.

From East Grader, Frank McCarthy: “I think as long as the deer population holds, adult people don’t have too much to worry about, generally. Two things though; with drought seemingly constant and with the lion population growing, the deer population is dwindling. Secondly, I do believe that children are at risk. Most of the attacks in So Cal now are directed towards children, even with adults present. It’s an easy risk benefit calculation for a lion. Any attractants like water troughs, food for turkeys or salt for deer, anything you do to encourage wildlife, you will encourage predators. So think carefully before you do that. And always have a means to defend yourself and your children. A game warden told me that it’s not the lion you see you have to worry about, it’s the lion you don’t.”