ESCONDIDO, Calif. (KGTV) — The mountain lion that turned an Escondido neighborhood upside down Monday had a simple explanation for being there — he was a young and lost, wandering far from home.
Steve Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the animal — now identified as M129 — was approximately 2 to 3 years old and had likely ventured into the residential area while searching for his own territory after leaving his mother.
"This is about the time they're leaving their mother. They're looking for their own territory. They're young juveniles, like teenagers, just trying to find a place to fit in, almost the same feeling," Gonzalez said.
Mountain lions need approximately 200 miles to roam, Gonzalez said, and young animals striking out on their own can sometimes end up far outside their natural range.
That's what brought the 112-pound male to the neighborhood where he spent hours hiding under Antonia Leal's car.
She didn't know it was there at first, but noticed something when she walked outside to check on her laundry Monday afternoon.
"The tail was popping out, moving around," she told ABC 10News in Spanish. "It scared me, so I came back here to say that something was there.”
Gonzalez said, most times, the CDFW environmental scientists will monitor the mountain lion, wait for it to get quiet and dark, and the animal will just leave the area on its own.
Obviously, that didn't happen on Monday, with a giant crowd forming in the middle of the day.
Escondido Police officers were on hand with guns drawn just in case the mountain lion made a move to attack someone — which fortunately never happened.
"Because of all the onlookers and all the attention and just the location that it was at, it was determined that the best steps were to sedate it, capture it, and then take it back to the wild.”
Gonzalez said it was shot once with a tranquilizer dart at 6:12 p.m. Then the mountain lion hopped a fence and stumbled a few hundred feet away, which he said isn't uncommon.
The lion was administered a second dose when it was jabbed with a pole syringe at 6:38 p.m.
Ten minutes later is when the scientists moved in to pick up the lion and load it into their truck. Gonzalez said a third and final injection was administered by hand at 7 p.m.
Back at the CDFW facility, the lion gets its vitals tested. Gonzalez said the tests came back healthy.
Then it receives a collar, which allows the team to track the animal. It stays on the animal for eight months, but automatically pops off the animal when the battery dies, according to Gonzalez.
The scientists also tag the lions ear for identification, before driving it deep into the wild to be relocated.
In this case, CDFW transported M129 to the Cleveland National Forest, where he was released at 11 p.m. Monday.
For residents like Christian Lemus, the explanation does little to make the experience feel any less surreal.
"I play a lot of Call of Duty online and I'm just telling everybody about what happened yesterday. They can't believe it. They're like, oh my God," Lemus said.
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