Mountain lion cub euthanized after wandering into El Dorado County bakery

Oct. 17, 2018 10 AM PT

A mountain lion cub startled a bakery employee this week when it walked through the door of the business.

Deputies from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the bakery in Pollock Pines, Calif., on Monday afternoon after a passerby met the bakery employee outside and called 911, Sgt. Anthony Prencipe said.

“A person was working in their bakery and this small mountain lion just walked through the door and they ended up just walking out as soon as they saw it,” Prencipe said.

The employee was soon joined by about 10 people who had gotten word about the shop’s unlikely visitor.

Despite the excitement, it was not a happy ending for the cub, who at about 4 months old was extremely lethargic and dehydrated and too young to be away from its mother, said Jordan Traverso, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Department.

The cub was tranquilized at the bakery and taken to a Fish and Wildlife lab in Sacramento, where it was evaluated and euthanized that night.

“At the bakery, the wardens could place a hand on it, and all it would do was momentarily raise its head to look at them before putting its head back down,” she said. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife “determined that the most humane course of action was to euthanize the animal.”

A necropsy is being done on the wildcat’s body to test for underlying diseases that may have contributed to the animal’s poor health, Traverso said.