Wildlife sightings

 The big news in the neighborhood is that a mountain lion got into a house when the owners were away and ate their house cat, a Fetcher-look-alike named Klondike. 

Here's a photo of the post the police put up on their Twitter feed:

The photo with the tweet was taken by the police, who "hazed" the lion with non-lethal pellets until it ran out the door and into nearby open space.  The photo below was taken by a neighbor,  Leah Frankel.  Apparently, the mountain lion roamed around the house for several hours before being driven out by the police.  Can you imagine coming home and finding this intruder there? 

Thankfully, this incident was "unprecedented," and it happened several blocks north and west of us, much closer to the mountain and canyon than we are located.   A bobcat was recently sighted across the street from us and bears have been spotted several times in nearby trees, but basically our yard is  wildlife free.

While a mountain lion is not on my list of animals I'd like to see while hiking or driving around here, it is thrilling to occasionally catch a glimpse of a bear,  a coyote, a fox, or an elk or moose.  And our reward for hiking up a canyon in yesterday's heat was seeing a gaggle of wild turkeys in the woods.  I've never have seen that before, and I was pretty excited!