You never know who’s watching.
Home surveillance camera footage obtained last year showed a mountain lion stalking a jogger in an Ojai, California, neighborhood.
Hidden mountain lion watches runner in Ojai, California 😳 pic.twitter.com/4Z2hbGTqMF
— OddIy Terrifying (@closecalls7) September 29, 2022
A YouTube upload of the home camera footage claims that the incident occurred on Sept. 10, 2021.
It’s not entirely clear if the mountain lion made any subsequent contact with a human.
The beast took effective cover behind a bush — the jogger completely unaware that they were being watched by a dangerous predator.
It’s not common for mountain lions to attack humans, but it’s not unprecedented, either.
It’s possible that the big cat was considering whether or not to strike at the moment the unsuspecting jogger passed his hiding space.
Fortunately for both parties, the cat was wise enough to let the human travel blissfully on.
It’s considered healthy for the cats to fear humans, and it’s not common for the beasts to enter residential neighborhoods as seen in the Ojai video.
A northern California woman was attacked by a big cat on a rural trail in May. The woman’s dog charged the beast in an act of loyalty that may have saved her life.
The cats do tend to get in confrontations with joggers, especially when mothers are in the presence of their young.
They’re considered more of a danger to smaller animals, such as dogs and cats. It’s considered unwise to let pets loose in rural areas where mountain lions are known to reside, according to the Mountain Lion Foundation.
A Utah man got into an extended confrontation with a mother mountain lion in 2020, and he resorted to throwing a rock at the animal in a bid to get it to retreat.
In a BBC interview, Kyle Burgess recounted using every wildlife trick he knew of in an ultimately successful bid to get the aggravated and aggressive cat to leave him alone.
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Mountain lions are native to much of the American West, although the territorial animals have low population densities, according to the National Wildlife Foundation.
