Cougar Wants to Stay Under House

Two workers went underneath a home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles yesterday. One fled as fast as he could after he came face-to-face with a mountain lion! He alerted Jason Archinaco, the homeowner, who called authorities.

Armando Navarrete, a team leader with Los Angeles Animal Services who was the first wildlife official on the scene in Los Feliz, said the mountain lion was about 25 feet behind a wall separating the crawl space from a balcony under the house.
The worker who discovered the animal looked as white as a ghost, Navarrete said, and had gotten out of there “like a bat out of hell.”
Navarrete said he at first figured the beast for a bobcat. But when he crawled in himself and got about 10 feet away, he knew he was staring at a top-of-the-food-chain animal.

The cougar was identified as the locally famous P-22, a tagged cat who makes his home in nearby Griffith Park. He became internet famous when his image was captured by National Geographic photographer Steve Winter in 2013 with the Hollywood sign in the background.
To get the cat out of the crawl space, authorities tried making noise and shooting bean bags at him, but the cat wouldn’t budge. He made no aggressive movements. With a crowd of people around and helicopters overhead, wildlife authorities blocked the entrance to the crawl space and decided to wait until the neighborhood was calm before trying again to get P-22 out. After all, he may have been underneath the house a long time before being spotted. As of this morning, he was still underneath the home.