Jogger, 29, Fends Off 3 Charges by Cougar

Waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs, a U.S. Forest Service firefighter fended off a 150-pound mountain lion that repeatedly charged him while he was jogging in a remote area of Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park Sunday morning, Forest Service officials said.

The man’s shouts eventually brought help from fellow firefighters, who found the lion gone and the man standing atop a post, shaken but unhurt.

The incident occurred on the Sitton Peak truck trail a few miles from the spot where Laura Michelle Small, a 5-year-old from El Toro, was severely mauled by a lion last March. Trackers killed the lion that they believed had made that attack.

Last month, a female mountain lion and her cub were captured in the same area of the park and later sent to a zoo in Salt Lake City.

Charged Three Times

Fire engine operator Kenneth Jordan, 29, an animal trapper in his spare time, said that during Sunday’s encounter, the lion, estimated to weigh 150 to 160 pounds, charged three times, even though he was yelling at the lion and backing off.

State wildlife officials have warned that mountain lions, also called pumas and cougars, have become bolder and range nearer to populated areas as their numbers have increased since 1972, when the Legislature made hunting them illegal.

The statewide lion population was estimated at 5,000 in 1984; local officials say there are about 25 mountain lions in Orange County.

Jordan said he was on his usual before-work morning jog above the Forest Service’s San Juan station on Ortega Highway east of San Juan Capistrano. He said he spotted the lion out of the corner of his eye--about 20 feet away and charging straight at him.

“I turned to him and yelled, ‘Get back!’ as loud as I could,” Jordan said. The big cat, startled, stopped dead in its tracks three or four feet away from him, he said. Then it turned and ran back toward what Jordan thinks was some kind of wounded prey, perhaps a deer or a rabbit.

“If I had run, or reached for a stick or a rock, he would have killed me,” Jordan said.

Jordan, keeping an eye on the lion, walked backwards up the road, he said. Then, from about 50 feet away, the lion charged again, stopping once more just a few feet from Jordan, who was waving his arms and screaming at the cat to back off.

Moved 100 Yards Away

Again the cat retreated, and Jordan continued uphill to a spot about 100 yards from the lion, he said.

But the animal charged a third time just as firefighter Margo Erickson, Jordan’s jogging partner who had fallen behind, came into view. “He slowed this time, but he kept coming,” Jordan said. “Just as he was about to jump, he saw Margo. I yelled at her to go back down the trail, and he (the lion) ran.”

Erickson, 27, said she thought that Jordan was telling her to go back to the station because there was a fire or some other emergency somewhere. But, she said, when Jordan kept yelling after she had already started heading back toward the station, she realized that something was wrong.

“I yelled, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he yelled, ‘Get back to the station. There’s a mountain lion coming at me,’ ” Erickson said. “I asked him if he was OK and he said yes. So I took off running downhill, yelling the names of the guys at the station.”

When she reached Ortega Highway, Erickson said, she stopped two motorists and told them to get help at the station. Within a few minutes, a fire engine and a four-wheel-drive vehicle from the station arrived and headed up the access road to find Jordan.

Yelled for Jordan

The fire engine stopped about half a mile up, and Erickson and the engine’s driver began yelling for Jordan. The other driver, forestry technician Mike Ostrowski, continued up the road in the four-wheel-drive vehicle, Erickson said.

About two minutes later, Ostrowski reported over the radio that he had found Jordan, uninjured, standing on a fence post.

“ ‘Thank God,’ I thought,” Erickson said. “I was really scared. . . . His life was in danger. As far as I knew, he could have been lying up there mauled or something.” Jordan, who lives with his wife and three children in Quail Valley, in Riverside County, said he was not particularly frightened during the ordeal.

“I was pretty busy. And I know they can smell the fear, so I was trying to think of something else, like I got too many loose ends at home to let this happen to me,” Jordan said.

At first, Jordan said, he thought the lion might have charged him to protect its wounded prey. But when it continued to attack even after Jordan had backed off 100 yards, Jordan figured that “he wanted me for dinner. He came after me not once, but three times. It just seemed like he wanted to attack but he wasn’t sure he could handle me.”

This One Was Big

Jordan said he has seen several mountain lions before, but only one as large as this one. “I could see its muscles rippling. It had a big face, and the tracks were amazing. Those are some of the largest tracks I’ve seen in these mountains.”

Sunday’s incident, which Forest Service officials termed a “wildlife observation” rather than a mountain lion attack, occurred in an undeveloped part of the county wilderness park, which lies on the border of the Cleveland National Forest.

County officials could not be reached for comment, but a Caspers park ranger said the park was still open and the sighting was “no big deal.”

After the attack on Laura Small, whose skull was punctured by the animal’s fangs and is still recovering from brain damage, the park was closed for two weeks while officials searched for signs of more lions.

Laura Small’s parents have filed a claim against the county for $28 million, alleging that officials failed to warn visitors of wildlife danger in the park.

The county has rejected the claim, and the parents will probably file a lawsuit “within the next couple of weeks,” said Laura’s father, Donald Small.