Posted on 10/07/2012 7:22:10 AM PDT by Free Vulcan
Police shot and killed a mountain lion this morning in Des Moines.
Kevin Baskins, with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says it’s extremely unusual for such an animal to end up in a residential neighborhood.
“Certainly, we see the occasional mountain lion wander through the state of Iowa, but to the best of our knowledge, we really have not seen one in urban setting like Des Moines,” Baskins said.
”The only explanation we can think of is that mountain lions will follow river corridors and the river is in fairly close proximity to where this cat got shot.”
The mountain lion was spotted by a man in the backyard of his home, located on Des Moines’ northeast side, at 9:30 a.m. Around two hours earlier, police had received reports of a mountain lion near an elementary school.
Baskins said officers had little choice but to shoot the animal, given it’s size and the fact that it was in a residential area near two schools. But, he notes mountain lions aren’t considered a great threat to humans.
“Mountain lions generally tend to avoid people as much as possible,” Baskins said. “In Iowa, we’ve yet to have a documented case of a mountain lion attack on a human.”
The young male cat shot in Des Moines measured six feet, three inches from nose to tail and weighed over 70 pounds. “A full grown male mountain lion can weigh 140 to 160 pounds, so this one may have had his full height, but probably still had some room to grow,” Baskins said.
Mountain lions are no stranger to rural areas of Iowa as they’re pushed out of the Black Hills or mountainous regions to the west. A mountain lion can move several hundred miles in just a few days.
The lion shot in Des Moines is now being examined by the DNR. “One of the things we look at when we get an animal like this is the stomach contents to see what kind of diet it had just prior to being killed,” Baskins said. “I know in the past, it’s been mostly rabbits, mice and squirrels.”
On a side note, word on the street down here is that the Missouri DNR have secretly and illegally released cougars in the NE part of the state, where they obviously migrated to ours. Have heard rumors of the same about wolves, but they have not turned up as of yet.
Too bad...if the headline writer had used “cougar” instead of “mountain lion”..you’d have 200 replies and 50 pics on this thread..
The lion shot in Des Moines is now being examined by the DNR. “One of the things we look at when we get an animal like this is the stomach contents to see what kind of diet it had just prior to being killed,” Baskins said. “I know in the past, it’s been mostly rabbits, mice and squirrels.”
If it had been the lion that was visiting my ranch here in New Mexico a couple weeks ago they would have found some of my sheep in its belly.
Big Kitty ping!
Well good for them. They got to shoot something that day and it wasn’t a dog.
Probably someones pet they raised from a cub that got loose
The wildlife experts in Kansas and Missouri said the same thing for years including the escaped pet nonsense (the dog ate my homework). Finally, they had to admit that these critters are living among us, and they are reproducing. My neighbor lost two pigs a few years back to an adult and a cub judging from the size of the paw prints.
“What do you need those rifles for? The deer are all gone.”
Mountain lion shot and killed
Palo Alto visit fatal to cougar / Cop shoots cat near schools and residences Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Palo-Alto-visit-fatal-to-cougar-Cop-shoots-cat-2776914.php#ixzz28coyEDXe
They probably mistook it for a dog.
That is obviously not a mountain lion, that is a great plains lion
Jobs must be getting scarce in the woods.
How about plenty of cats and dogs for easy pickings
It was all for the children, you know.
Basically, the DNR denies the existence of such predators because an admission of such would open a bureaucratic can of worms they’d rather not deal with.
There have been lots of reports about coyote invasions, and there was a moose seen in NE Iowa a few years ago. It's good that large wildlife is returning to Iowa. I'll only get nervous when there are reports of bears and wolves.
Why kill it????
Sounds like something in Dallas a few years ago. A large gorilla at the zoo escaped its enclosure and ended up being shot and killed. The local animal worshippers held a candlelight vigil at City Hall in its memory.
In 2006 the Sioux City Police shot a cougar that had denned up in a city park. The I-DNR was all agog, then, about how there were no restrictions on killing mountain lion in Iowa as the species was considered a non indigenous predator, at the same level as a coyote. Any caliber weapon, permission from the landowner to shoot on private property.
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