Game warden advises keeping pets inside between dusk and
dawn
A Morgan Hill woman out searching for a dog told police that she came face to face with a mountain lion early Sunday afternoon. The dog had bolted at about 7:30 a.m. while on a walk; she was afraid the big cat had killed her dog.
The incident occurred on Circle Drive in the Jackson Oaks subdivision in the eastern foothills.
One of three dogs on the walk remained missing overnight. It returned home Monday at 6:45 a.m.
“It was a harrowing experience,” Davlyn Giovanetti said. “I was so worried because my dog just doesn’t do this (run away).”
According to Morgan Hill Police Cpl. Melinda Zen, Giovanetti and her three dogs, a pointer, a collie and a Shetland Sheepdog, were out for a walk in the same neighborhood where a mountain lion and her cub were seen several times earlier this year. After one of those sightings, police found a lair, or nest, where the mountain lion was believed to be raising a cub. The lair was near Giovanetti’s house.
Shortly after Giovanetti let the dogs off leash so they could run, they caught the scent of something and took off. Only the pointer and the collie returned.
While Giovanetti was walking in a dry creek bed looking for the 2-year-old Sheltie – which resembles a small collie – she came upon the mountain lion about 30 feet away, which she described as full grown. Giovanetti said she has had other encounters with lions and was quite sure it was a mountain lion, not a bobcat.
“She did all the wrong things,” said MHPD Lt. Terrie Booten. “She backed away and crouched behind a bush.”
State Fish and Game Warden Kyle Kroll, who was called to the scene Sunday, agreed with Booten.
“If you come upon a mountain lion, you should make yourself as big and as noisy as possible,” Kroll said. “Hunkering down makes you look like prey and invites an attack – jumping up and down could scare the lion and make it run away.”
The lion looked at Giovanetti, Kroll said, and walked off, not attempting an attack. After she called police on her cell phone at 12:19 p.m., they combed the area looking for the lion, the dog or any evidence of a confrontation.
Kroll said he thought the dog may have been scared, was hiding and would possibly show up later as it did.
Shortly after Giovanetti called police, a neighbor of hers told Kroll he was walking across a small bridge on his property, on his way to an observatory, when he noticed something dark under the bridge.
“At first he thought it was a fox,” Kroll said, “but since it did not have a bushy tail he thought it was probably a lion cub.”
The cub ran into a nearby culvert, about 12 inches in diameter; neighbors piled rocks at the opening, which Kroll later removed.
“I wasn’t sure if the cub was still there,” Kroll said, “but I moved the rocks so it could meet up with its mother after everything calmed down.”
Kroll advised pet owners in mountain lion territory, which Morgan Hill’s eastern and western hills are, to bring dogs and cats in at night and during dusk and dawn, prime lion hunting times.
Giovanetti and her fiancé, veterinarian John Quick, had a difficult night, she said, worrying about the dog, named KCee.
“He just loves to give you hugs,” Giovanetti said.
Morgan Hill has been known for mountain lion encounters since Isola Kennedy and a child died from a lion attack in 1909.
In late March this year, police found three cubs in the back yard of a house near Llagas and Hale avenues, next to Shadow Mountain School.
One was tranquilized and released in the back country, a second escaped and was hit by a car and killed and the third was shot and killed because it tried to claw through a screen door of a house. Morgan Hill police received many angry calls, e-mails and letters accusing them of unacceptable cruelty to the cats but Fish and Game wardens said the police acted responsibly.
The incident gained state and even nationwide attention.
Mountain lion experts say the increasing encounters between lion and humans is caused by residential areas pushing further into the lions’ territory. This leaves the big cats little choice but to forage for food where it can be found, which is occasionally in people’s back yards.
By encouraging cute fawns and deer with salt licks and water troughs, residents of near wild areas make their neighborhoods more attractive to lions, since lions feed on deer.
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office recently rehired veteran fish and game warden Henry Coletto as its mountain lion expert. The formerly retired woodsman’s new part-time job is to map lion sightings, investigate unusual ones, get all county agencies to use the same system for reporting lions and train police and animal control officers around the county how best to deal with the big cats.
