No one wants to see harm come to a wild animal, especially one as beautiful and majestic as a mountain lion. Still, when that wild beast crosses over from its natural habitat to a populated area and becomes a threat to human life, authorities have to take the action that they deem appropriate.
Such was the case on the morning of April 26 when a mature mountain lion wandered down out of the hills and into the residential area that surrounds Leigh High School.
Residents awoke in the early morning hours to the sound of barking dogs and the sight of police cars lining the streets of their otherwise quiet neighborhood. Dogs had chased the mountain lion into a tree in the backyard of a residence on Los Gatos-Almaden Road—not far from Leigh, and also very close to Noddin Elementary School.
San Jose Police Department officers and personnel from the California Department of Fish and Game were forced to make a difficult decision in a hurry. With the dangerous situation created by the many elementary and high school students walking the nearby streets on their way to school, officials at the site deemed it necessary to shoot and kill the animal.
A shotgun blast at about 8 a.m. dropped the mountain lion to the ground, and a beautiful beast that had roamed free for a lifetime in the hills away from civilization now lay lifeless in a yard of a home in suburbia.
It was a sad sight. Yet sad as it was, it was the only thing that law enforcement officials could do. In the interest of public safety, they made the right call at the right time.
Almost immediately, there were those who questioned the decision, just as some had several months ago when a mountain lion was shot and killed after wandering into a Palo Alto neighborhood. After all, it's humans who have invaded the natural habitat of the big cats and every effort should be made to tranquilize these animals and return them to the wild.
That was not an option officials could consider in this case. The tranquilizer would take too long to take effect, and the danger presented by a wounded lion racing through a residential area filled with children was far too great.
Sure, the big cats may have roamed freely in the town named for "the cats" at one time, but that was long before subdivisions spread out from downtown Los Gatos to the edges of the foothills. Now housing developments connect Los Gatos to all of its neighboring cities in a blur of borders, leaving little room for wild animals on the valley floor. When they do invade our more populated areas—especially in the case of a dangerous animal like a mountain lion—public safety officials have no choice but to take quick action.
It was a sad sight to see emergency personnel walking away from the scene carrying the lion's body in a bag. It would have been a much sadder sight, however, had that bag contained the body of a child.
