Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : AT THE SCENE : Young Cougar Caught at Lake Mission Viejo

A 36-pound male mountain lion, seen on the fringes of Mission Viejo for days, was finally captured when guards at the gate to Lake Mission Viejo saw him in the shrubbery bordering the lake’s parking lot.

Wildlife officers who subdued the cub with a tranquilizer dart and trundled him off to a wildlife preserve said he appeared to be 4 to 6 months old, in good health and well fed.

There was no sign of the cub’s mother, which was unusual, they said, since cubs typically are dependent on their mothers for 18 months or so.

It takes “a rather drastic event” to separate a cub that young from its mother, said Larry Sitton, a state Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. It is not uncommon, however, for mother lions to be killed or disabled by accidents in the wild, he said.

The cub was found in an area surrounded by tracts of houses and condominiums, but only 1 miles from the edge of O’Neill Regional Park and about five miles from the boundary of the Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park.

Two children were mauled by mountain lions in Caspers Park last year, and the park was closed, then reopened with new regulations banning children in campgrounds and on hiking trails, and requiring wilderness permits for adults in those areas.

O’Neill Park has been closed for nearly 12 weeks after mountain lions were sighted there. That park is scheduled to reopen Friday with new regulations similar to those at Caspers Park.