As Peggy McClintick and her wife Sally Tuchman slept, someone came into their Agoura Hills yard out of the blue.
Around 3:30 a.m. last Thursday, McClintock checked her phone and saw a message telling her that a security camera at her Agoura Hills house had seen someone.
The message didn’t make people think too much. The camera went off at 11:30 p.m. the night before; someone in a nearby garage could have set it off.
She checked the video anyway, and it “completely freaked her out.”
A mountain lion quickly jumped from a small yard with fake grass to a cement wall, which was caught on video by their Ring camera.
The big cat sits there for a moment, looking around the area, and then walks smoothly along the wall.
It jumps off, and the night takes it in.
This morning, McClintick woke Tuchman up to watch the video. They then spent the rest of the night talking about what it all meant.
Ollie, their about 20-pound Goldendoodle, is often walked by one of them in that spot at that exact time. As they turn the corner, it’s dark until a motion sensor light turns on.
This week, Tuchman said, “We feel like we have to change all of our habits. We can’t take him out in that side yard after dark anymore.” “Because it’s pretty closed off.”
I would walk Ollie there during the day for days and “just stand there and look at that spot that she was on and just absolutely panic,” she said. “Because it is so close to our everyday lives.”
Based on the film, which they think shows a female mountain lion, the couple calls the cougar “she.”
McClintock and Tuchman’s house is less than a mile from a large urban wildlife crossing that is being built over the 101 Freeway to help cougars and other animals get across safely.
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is meant to give lions in the Santa Monica Mountains that have been living alone a genetic chance. These lions have shown problems from inbreeding and could go extinct if nothing is done.
A member of the Agoura Hills City Council named Jeremy Wolf said that the recent video of the mountain lion gave him hope that the crossing would be helpful.
Wolf, who has worked on the project for a long time, said, “The main star showed up.” “They’re close by.”
“It will have a crossing to be able to get back and forth,” he said. The route should be finished in about a year and a half. “The fact that it was so close and would happen so soon gave me hope and motivation to keep pushing for the project.”
The last girder was put on the crossing last week, which finished the foundation and marked a major building milestone.
The National Park Service and the National Wildlife Federation were told about the sighting by Wolf. The Cougar Conservancy was told about it by McClintick and Tuchman.
The lion doesn’t have a collar or tag on it, which means experts aren’t following it or studying it.
McClintick was Wolf’s music teacher when he was younger, and she sent him the video of the mountain lion because she knew how much he liked animals.
The crossing is a good thing for McClintick and Tuchman, even though they are still getting used to the fact that there is a big cat so close to where they live.
“We just think we have to get along, right?” She said.
But she didn’t think a wild animal would jump into their yard because it wasn’t easy to get to, even for animals with four strong legs. On the other side of the wall shown in the movie, it’s steep.
She said, “I was shown to be wrong.” “I guess wild animals can get into your yard.”
