Pet-eating mountain lion slain

A pet-eating mountain lion confronted by a college student armed only with a broom was killed near Plains last week — although not with the broom.

The animal had been a problem predator for quite some time, according to local residents and Barbara Steward, who came face-to-face with it late Friday before a neighbor killed the cougar.

Steward, a University of Montana student, heard distressing cries from one of her kittens underneath the back porch as the sun was setting Oct. 21. She went to investigate and came face to face with a mountain lion.

“We had just gotten home and my dad decided to put some fish on the smoker and our cats were acting really weird,” Steward said. “A couple of them were missing and we couldn’t really put two and two together. Well, later I hear one of my baby kitties crying out for help. I thought it was just one of the older cats ganging up on it, so I walked out to the porch with a broom and I jumped off the deck and I had the broom in my hand. So, I’m going under the deck to poke at one of the bigger cats and I see something just huge.”

“At first I thought it was a big dog, but then I saw the long tail,” Steward said. “It dropped the kitten and got down low to its belly and started coming towards me. And I just see these glowing eyes in my face, so I just drop my broom and run back into the house, screaming for my dad. I heard it coming after me. We didn’t have a gun handy and I wanted to go back out there to get my kitten but I just watched it take it.”

The Stewards called state game warden Tom Chianelli shortly after the encounter and were given permission to kill the mountain lion if it came back.

They then called their friend, Jim Moellman and told him about the problem mountain lion. He arrived at their home early Saturday morning and so did the mountain lion.

The Stewards and Moellman saw that the predator had returned to their yard. The big cat began stalking their cattle, which had just been watered. As it went belly-crawling after the livestock, Moellman shot it.

The male mountain lion measured 6 foot 8 inches and was assumed to be around 4 years old.

“After we killed it, we went out into the tall grass and the mountain lion had bedded down not 30 feet from our back porch,” Steward said. “There were animal parts from the other neighborhood animals all over the place, scraps from a deer gut sack, feces — just everywhere. He definitely thought of it as his place to be. It’s spooky.”

Chianelli said that the number of calls about mountain lions have risen within the last year. He said most of the calls were sightings outside town and that it is rare for a mountain lion to come so close as a front porch.

“We have a zero tolerance policy for the type of behavior that mountain lion had,” Chianelli said. “It had been hanging around for a while, killing neighborhood pets, coming up on their porch — that’s a problem lion. It had to be destroyed, not relocated. So, when they called me, I gave them permission to destroy it if it came back.”

Steward’s cats were not the first of the mountain lion’s pet victims. Other neighborhood cats had been killed over time and Steward and her dad had recognized peculiarities throughout the summer.

“We had smelled his spray quite often, it was so rank — it resembles a skunk smell — and the deer weren’t coming in as close as usual,” Steward said. “The cats wouldn’t go near this certain area [in our yard], too. We’ve seen mountain lions before, but not one that was so comfortable with living right next to us. It’s just scary how familiar he was with our place. He has sprayed all over the front porch and my vehicle. He thought he owned the place.”