On March 30th Mission Viejo resident Madison Smith and her two children were out for an afternoon walk on Borrego Trail when a mountain lion began acting aggressively towards them. The big cat stalked the group and came within about 6 feet of her 5-year-old son, which is easy pouncing distance for a full-sized mountain lion.
Luckily, there was another hiker on the trail who began shouting at the lion and throwing rocks at it. This allowed the family to get away.
After a call to 911, Orange County Sheriff deputies and a California Department of Fish and Wildlife game warden located the big 1-year old, 60-lb mountain lion some bushes just a few feet off Borrego Trail at about 5 p.m. Sunday. According to reports, they attempted to scare the animal away, but the big cat wasn’t in the mood. It began acting aggressively towards the officers, showing no fear whatsoever. The DFW game warden was forced to put the animal down.
The lion’s body was transported to a California Department of Fish and Wildlife laboratory in San Bernardino for examination. Officials there will examine the carcass to determine if disease or hunger may have prompted its aggression.
“Normally, we would not have expected the animal to have yet left its mother,” said UC Davis Wildlife Health Center Associate Veterinarian Winston Vickers, the lead veterinarian on the Southern California Puma Project. “So it does make one wonder if there was an issue there that could have led the animal to behave abnormally.”
Mountain lion attacks are rare but do occur yearly in North America, and aggressive tactics like this are very unusual as the mountain lion is an apex stalk-and-ambush predator. The last mountain lion-related human death in California happened January 2004 in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, the same area where this aggressive mountain lion incident happened.
Be careful out there on the trail!