Posted on 05/25/2011 4:56:20 PM PDT by Daffynition
UPDATE 9:20 a.m. - Charlene Wilkinson just wanted to read the news, not be the news when she picked up the Independent Record off her porch Wednesday morning.
Then she got a call from the Helena Police dispatcher shortly after 7 a.m., telling her to stay inside and move away from the windows because a mountain lion was curled up on her front porch, precisely where she had picked up her newspaper just moments earlier.
"They told me not to even look out the window because I could startle it and it could go through the window," Wilkinson said, recalling a Townsend mountain lion that did just that. "So I got away from the window and called my son."
Moments later, Dave Loewen, a game warden with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, shot the year-old mountain lion from the safety of his truck.
Loewen said they initially wanted to dart the lion and capture it, but it was too dangerous to do that in the residential neighborhood.
"I couldn't get a clean shot, and if I darted it and it didn't take effect, it would run off. I didn't want to make a second problem," Loewen said.
The lion was on the porch in the quiet subdivision just west of the St. Peter's Group medical building, near the corner of Road Runner and Sand Piper Loop.
Check tomorrow's Independent Record for more on this story.
Lewis & Clark County Sheriff's Department and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials have located a mountain lion on the 100 block of Sandpiper Loop. Authorities have cornered the lion on a porch of a house and are asking people to stay out of the area and residents to stay in their homes until the lion is darted.
Where I live we follow the code...
Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up.
They die so our children may live.
A lion comortable enough to curl up on a porch is a lion who has no fear of people and people should fear them.
We also shoot, shovel and shut up.
oh, please....it was a mountain lion on someones porch, had they tranquilized it and took it into the wild, how soon do you suppose it would have come back...wild animals which have no fear of humans are VERY dangerous....killing it was the right thing to do! Libs and stupid people only care about the easiest thing to preserve
Our property backs right up to the National Forest, so we have to be prepared.
In East Fort Worth, that would have been considered a Drive By shooting.
In other parts of the state, a Road Shooter...Poacher.
There are many phobias for people. Afraid of heights, claustrophobia, arachnophobia, well I'm mountain lionphobic. So I'm sure PETA can sue me for that, but I have nightmares about them things.
The horrid stories of young children, pets, joggers, ect... being mauled by mountain lions is insane.
I put out a challenge (besides democrats) what species in the United States of America is more aggressive towards humans than mountain lions?
You’ll get no argument from me. The cat was minding its own business.
I am with you on the phobia. I probably shouldn’t have read this...we have a wooded area in our back yard, it’s our children’s favorite place to play. Now I’ll be in fear mode for the next several months every time they go back there.
I’m with you. After his nap, this one-year-old would have sauntered off on his own.
Trigger-happy guy in a pickup truck!
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He is a game warden. They aren’t usually trigger happy. MT takes their wildlife very seriously but there’s been plenty of ugly incidents where cats ‘minding their own business’ hurt people when startled.
Charlene was in the house. Can you imagine the potential danger to getting killed by a stray HP shot from the officer’s gun
I *love* it, he shot from the *safety* of his vehicle. Much bigger chance of that happening than getting killed by the lion. Morons. Twice over.
I agree with both of you. How many people get killed by mountain lions a year?
It’s very rare to get harmed by a mountain lion. They’re all over the place here and I have never seen one. Just heard them, seen their prints and scat, and deer they’ve killed. I prefer mountain lions to most people.
That is an awesome photo. The north American Mountain lion-cougar is, imo, the most beautiful out of all the big cats on the planet.
Thx for posting that.
I prefer mountain lions to most people.
me too lj (especially in the insane world we now have to live in)
Also if cats that aren’t afraid of human’s, they raise their young to also stay in the human area....those that stay away have cubs that usually stay away also....Any predator within an area that can kill a child should be done away with....our ancestors were smarter than todays people, they knew a danger when they saw it and eleminated it...
I have had exactly one closeup encounter with a mountain lion, while riding my mountain bike in a semi-rural area.
I was close enough to see his enormous, sinewy, lithe muscles under his coat, and there was no doubt in my mind he could have easily killed me that day. He was about 50 feet away, hanging out in an area where bunny rabbits were known to congregate in the afternoon to munch on grass, just off the trail I was riding (illegally!).
He looked like a sub adult, but his tail was thicker than my arm, and his shoulder muscles looked like coils of cable. He was immense!
This occured on Sheep Camp Trail, just west of Belmont, CA. The next week I moved to Texas.
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