Corrina Bubenheim of Woodland Hills, California got a surprise last week when her two German Shepards started barking furiously at a large avocado tree in the backyard. Turns out, there was a mountain lion in the tree, and she definitely had a good sense of humor about it.
After the dogs alerted their owner to something amiss and she spotted a bunch of fallen leaves around the base of her tree, Bubenheim investigated.
“I checked, and I looked up, and I thought, ‘it’s bigger than a squirrel, might be a possum,’” Bubenheim told local news. “[But then] I thought, ‘this is furry; it looks like a German Shepard, but a German Shepard doesn’t get up the tree.’ And then it looked down; it was a mountain lion.”
The Woodland Hills neighborhood borders the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. Mountain lions show up occasionally, but not often enough that Bubenheim had reason to suspect a cougar would be hanging out in her tree that afternoon.
“I thought I’m the only cougar in the house,” she joked with the reporter from NBCLA.
After calling wildlife authorities, Bubenheim waited several hours while the mountain lion lounged in her tree, then casually left without human intervention. Authorities went door to door in the neighborhood warning residents of the cougar’s presence and advising them to keep pets inside.
Bubenheim suspects the mountain lion may have set up camp in her avocado tree because it was curious about her backyard chicken coop. Thankfully, no humans, domesticated animals, or wild animals were hurt.