Posted: Thursday, January 23, 2014
Lake Havasu City, it’s likely that there’s a new
cougar in town, but you’ll want to steer clear. The big cat may not be
chasing after younger men, but the carnivore might want to chomp down on
your pets.
A resident in the Tahitian Drive neighborhood claims to have seen the cougar twice, most recently as Tuesday morning. “I’d guess it was 80 to 100 pounds,”
said Homer Lee, 80, who saw the cat — also known as a mountain lion —
while he was out walking his dog, Maggie. “It was about 8:30 in the morning. We
were walking by a vacant lot down Pueblo back to Tahitian. It was
walking along a block wall that was six feet tall, then jumped up on the
wall. It jumped down on the other side into someone’s yard, then pretty
soon it hopped back out and just kept walking.”
Wildlife Manager Suzanne Ehret isn’t surprised by Lee’s mountain lion sighting, which she investigated on Wednesday. “They’ll (mountain lions) wander into
town looking for water because it’s been a really dry winter,” she
explained. “They move through the washes, which are like wildlife
freeways in Havasu.”
Ehret, an official with the Arizona Game
and Fish Department, has been on the job in Havasu for three years and
said she takes lion sightings very seriously. The big cats are not
uncommon in Havasu and typically keep to themselves. “They’re fearful of humans, but if they
show any aggression, that’s a problem. But an encounter — a sighting —
is not problematic,” Ehret said, noting that a mountain lion won’t stick
around Havasu very long. “Usually, they are just passing through. They’ll be here for a couple of days and then move on.”
Described as grayish-brownish in color,
an adult mountain lion can be six- to eight-feet long from the tip of
its nose to the tip of its tail. The tail is the big clue. Versus the
shorter tail of a bobcat, Ehret said a mountain lion’s tail makes up
two-thirds of its body length. A mature cat can be as tall as 32 inches
at the shoulder and weigh 100 pounds.
Ehret said the mammals are diurnal,
meaning they are more active in the mornings and at dusk. Because they
are carnivores, their cylindrical scat may contain fur. Sleuths can
easily differentiate mountain lion paw prints from a canine’s because
they are much larger and there are no claw marks. Plus, she said a dog
or coyote leaves and “X” in its print, unlike a cougar.
Ehret’s investigation of Homer Lee’s
sighting yielded little. There were no paw prints in the gravelly area
where he saw the cat, nor was there any scat to examine. But Ehret’s hunt isn’t over. “We’re keeping tabs on it as an agency,” she said.
As for Homer Lee, he’s keeping an eye out for the big cat. “I’m pretty sure it was the same one I
saw right before Christmas. I was in my car on Jamaica at about
Chesapeake around 7 at night and it walked in front of me. I think it
was walking through the wash and had to cross the road.”
Because Lee sees coyotes frequently while walking the dog, he carries an air horn with him. “It’ll scare off the coyotes, but when I blasted it at the cat on Tuesday, it didn’t even turn its head,” he sighed.
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