Emaciated Mountain Lion Killed in Back Yard

A Malibu couple who moved to Ojai two weeks ago to be closer to nature got more than they bargained for when a mountain lion took up residence in their back yard doghouse.

California Department of Fish and Game employees were forced to shoot the six-foot-long lioness Tuesday morning after it repeatedly resisted attempts to force it back into the mountains and kept moving toward the house.

During the encounter, the 45-pound, emaciated cat came within a foot of wildlife biologist Morgan Boucke, who attempted to tranquilize the animal but finally deemed it a hazard to humans.

The close contact with local wildlife surprised Donna Crews and Cole Epstein. They first spotted the animal Monday evening, although Crews had become suspicious earlier in the day when she saw a half-eaten possum atop a doghouse during a walk with two children who live near the couple’s Maricopa Highway home.

They called Boucke Tuesday morning, after realizing how close a school bus stop was to the wild animal’s adopted lair.

Wild mountain lions are often spotted in rural parts of Ojai, but Boucke said this lion behaved oddly. She said she fired several shots from a percussion gun above the lion’s head as it walked toward her, trying to scare it off.

“A normal lion would not keep approaching like that after I fired off those loud cracker shells. This one didn’t even flinch,” Boucke said.

As the animal maneuvered closer and closer to her home, Crews said she tossed a lawn chair at it, hoping to persuade it to head for the hills.

“(Boucke) told me she’d do all she could to scare the lion away and not kill it,” Crews said. “But she’d shot at the lion and it kept coming, then she actually hit it in the head with her gun, and he just kept coming closer and closer.”

Attempts to tranquilize the animal failed because Boucke and Game Warden Deborah Hill were unable to get into the proper position to take a shot, said Fish and Game Department spokesman Curt Taucher.

“We don’t like to kill living things. It’s something we try to avoid,” Boucke said. “But as people encroach further and further into the natural environment, more of these sorts of encounters happen.”

Boucke performed a necropsy, or autopsy, on the lion, hoping to determine if an illness was responsible for the animal’s emaciated condition and odd behavior. Because the animal’s internal organs appeared healthy and there were no signs of parasites, she was unable to determine a cause, she said.

The carcass was packed in 14 blocks of ice and shipped by bus to Sacramento for further study.

Crews and Epstein, who recently found a rattlesnake in their kitchen, asked each other what could possibly happen next in their semi-wilderness home.

“We came here to live in nature, but we would really prefer nature keep its spot and we keep ours,” Epstein said.

Times staff writer Pete Thomas contributed to this story.