Mountain Lion in House

A True Story

David and Dana Steinhauser live on Canyon Creek, and are owners of Trinity River Rafting.

There was fresh snow in Junction City Tuesday evening, March 9, 2010. Dana and I got back from Fire Department training (JCVFD), learning about "personal safety first and foremost " etc.

We decided to go out to the hot tub and enjoy the snow. We turned off almost all the lights to make it darker outside. The sky was clearing and we could see some stars, and then most of the sky filled with stars. We had brought our black pet cat, Romeow, outside to see the fresh snow. He had gone back inside but then ventured out again.

We heard some loud thumping, and I looked toward the house, 60' away, and saw what looked like a man hunched over walking past the picture window inside the living room of the house. I said to Dana "Someone or something big is in the house."

Thinking the worst about Romeow, Dana jumped out of the hot tub, and ran with bare feet toward the house yelling "Get out of my house."


When she got in, there was a mountain lion in the living room, taking up much of the space.The door had closed behind the lion because the floor of the house slants down towards the door, and the lion was trapped in the house. Romeow can open the door with his paws, but the cougar wasn't schooled in this art. Dana's first concern was that Romeow wasn't in the lion's mouth. She didn't see Romeow. The cougar was on the couch and table, and tried to get away from Dana through the picture window, but couldn't. Before long it ran into the kitchen. Dana went into the bedroom, and from there to the bathroom, where she saw Romeow, and shut the further bathroom door because the house has a circular layout and the lion could come around.

By this time I was in the house, and Dana and I shielded ourselves behind the front door, which is mostly glass, holding it open and yelling to try and scare the lion out. The front door, when open, acts almost like a closed door to the bedroom, so we felt comparatively protected, could see the livingroom, plus the door was held open for the cougar to get out. The cougar came back into the living room, went over to the picture window again, and eventually found its way out the front door, no more than a couple of feet in front of us.
I loudly slammed the door behind it.

After it left, we assessed the damage. Plants, magazines and a telephone were on the floor, and there were magnificent claw marks on an Heirloom Table loaned to us by Tom Stokely, who is a tireless advocate for the Trinity River.

There were deeper claw scratches to the right, but not done with as much artistic flair.

We went outside to look for tracks and didn't have to be a Tom Brown, master tracker, to find them in the snow.

Above are the deeper exit tracks, and below the approach tracks, both near the stairs to the porch.


The mountain lion probably followed Romeow into the house, and then was trapped. Dana was surprised, though, that kitty was in the bathroom and not under the bed. It is possible that the house was dark when the lion came into the house, because the electricity went out for a bit while we were outside. When the electricity comes back on there are loud beeps from the smoke detectors and other electrical sounds, and light that would be disconcerting to a mountain lion.

Dana called Fish and Game, but they weren't answering the phone at 11:30PM.

The next morning we explored further. One thing we didn't notice at night was blood smudged on both picture windows.

There are several bloody smudges here, one just above the brown rock, one upper right, and the one more in the middle is over 8" long.
Below is another view that shows dripping blood on the left.

The blood may have been from paw cuts from sharp mineral crystals that were on the window sill.

We hunted for more tracks and found where it had come down from and back up again from a drainage the other side of Canyon Creek Rd.

These tracks are coming down the draw, slowly and carefully.

And from the road to the driveway.

And a running-and-leap escape track at the bottom of the draw.

There was no sign above this track except for some lines in the snow from falling debris. The lion would have had to jump more than two times the height of Dana in the above picture to not leave a track there.

One might expect Romeow to be proud and boastful for bringing in a Mount Lion and bloodying it a little, but he seems quite reserved about it.

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