SANTA ANA, Calif. — A mountain lion surprised residents in a highly populated California neighborhood on Saturday before the animal was captured in the backyard of a home, authorities said.
“Anybody missing their cat?” Orange County Sheriff’s Department officials joked on Instagram.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife officers, a helicopter and Orange County Sheriff’s deputies responded after receiving reports of a mountain lion in an unincorporated area of Santa Ana, KTLA reported.
Authorities in Tustin and the unincorporated area of Santa Ana received numerous calls from residents who reported seeing the large cat around 8:30 a.m., according to the sheriff’s department. The feline was also caught on home security cameras, crossing front lawns before dawn and hopping fences, the The Orange County Register reported.
The area where the mountain lion was captured was in an area that included nearly 25,000 residents, the newspaper reported.
By 11:30 a.m., animal control officials spotted the feline and tranquilized it, KABC reported. The mountain lion was bound on the front lawn of a home before it was loaded into a vehicle to be transported to the Cleveland National Forest, Joe Harkey, an Orange County Sheriff’s dispatch supervisor, told the Register.
“This is very shocking. I’ve been here 15 years,” resident Jeff Bryant told KABC. “We get the occasional coyote but a mountain lion, hopping fences apparently, (is) pretty unusual.”
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