Two Gimlet residents got a shock last week when they arrived home to find a mountain lion waiting in their living room.
The estimated 80-pound cougar entered the house Sept. 3 through a set of open French doors, said Lee Garwood, conservation officer for the Magic Valley Region of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Garwood was called to the scene, but did not see the cougar himself.
According to Garwood, who declined to release the names of the residents, a woman and her son arrived home to see the cougar standing by the open doors. The cougar turned and left when it saw the son, who was able to close the doors as the lion bounded over a backyard fence.
"The cat reacted like we thought it should," Garwood said.
If the cat had stood its ground or tried to attack, Fish and Game conservation officers would have attempted to trap it.
Cougar sightings in the area are not unheard of. The Gimlet subdivision, located just south of Ketchum, is built near a riverbed frequented by deer, elk, raccoons and beavers, ample prey for opportunistic mountain lions.
"We've been getting reports out of there for about a year," Garwood said. "Those kinds of sightings are not rare."
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But having a cougar enter a house is much stranger. Garwood said stories of bears in houses are essentially a dime a dozen, but he cannot remember another report of a cougar actually entering a home.
"I suspect it may have seen the family cat or smelled it around and came up out of curiosity," Garwood said.
The last serious cougar-related incident in Gimlet occurred in December 2008, when a mountain lion attacked two dogs owned by Gimlet resident Lon Stickney.
The mountain lion took refuge under Stickney's porch, where it was trapped and relocated by Fish and Game Conservation Officers Garwood and Rob Morris.
"The first thing we have to remember is we're basically in wild animal territory," Garwood said. "It's part of living here."
Garwood's advice to residents in areas where mountain lions have been spotted is to keep all ground-level doors closed.
"If you have to open windows, by all means do so, but keep those doors closed," Garwood said.
Katherine Wutz: kwutz@mtexpress.com
Photo courtesy Idaho Department of Fish and Game
A 2-year-old male cougar was photographed in the Little Wood River drainage north of Carey in the winter of 2009. Cougars have been spotted recently around the Gimlet subdivision south of Ketchum.
