Residents in a Riverside County neighborhood are being extra careful when taking their pets outdoors after spotting a mountain lion prowling around the area in the dark of night.
Valerie Chapman said she’s seen plenty of rabbits and coyotes around her Lake Elsinore home, but a mountain lion captured on her home’s surveillance cameras was something of a surprise.
“I was shocked. I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s really a mountain lion roaming our streets in front of our house,’” she explained. “It was shocking, but kind of exciting but scary at the same time.”
The large cat was spotted on Gateway Drive and McVicker Canyon Park Drive Thursday night just before 9 p.m.
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It was the motion sensor on Chapman’s cameras that alerted her to the prowling mountain lion.
“It went up in between my car and my husband’s black truck and then it walked across my front door,” she told KTLA’s Shelby Nelson.
Joe Price thought he saw the mountain lion earlier in the day. It wasn’t until later in the day when he saw a post about the big cat on social media that he realized his eyes had not been fooling him.