Tails of the city: San Francisco’s latest animal sensation is a mountain lion

SAN FRANCISCO – Cellphones around San Francisco buzzed late on the night of Jan 26 with a very unusual alert: A young mountain lion had been spotted prowling around Pacific Heights, the upscale northern neighbourhood dotted with mansions and lush parks.

“If you see it, slowly back away,” the alert read, adding that it would also be wise to call 911.

Residents swapped texts and scared-face emojis. Local media outlets posted videos showing the mountain lion walking past Muni bus stops.

Another mountain lion had been captured in San Francisco in 2021 after climbing a tree, but any other such animal, also known as a cougar, in town since then had kept a low profile.

The city that famously has more dogs than children, that counts flocks of wild parrots, packs of coyotes and docks filled with sea lions among its residents, went to bed not knowing just how its latest bizarre animal storyline would play out.

In the middle of the night, at about 1.30am, Animal Care and Control officers scouring the neighbourhood spotted the mountain lion on California Street and called the police. Patrol cars pulled up, and officers saw the creature leap over a tall fence.

Upon further inspection, it appeared that the frightened animal had wedged himself in a narrow gap between two apartment buildings.

By early morning, dozens of officials from the San Francisco Zoo, the San Francisco Police Department, the San Francisco Fire Department, San Francisco Animal Care and Control, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife were on the scene – and one of them was inside the apartment of Ms Jessica Fajardo.

Ms Fajardo, a 35-year-old tech worker, said it was strange to see an animal control official in her apartment at dawn, but her husband had encountered the officer while out walking the couple’s dog and had invited her up to the sixth-floor apartment for a better look at the mountain lion.

“She came up, she went out onto the fire escape and shone a flashlight around,” Ms Fajardo recounted in an interview. “I’ve seen a lot of coyotes and have gotten used to cohabitating with them, but definitely a mountain lion is next level.”

Then, the morning got stranger.

Officials shut down a section of California Street. Others peered at the mountain lion, also known as a puma, from nearby rooftops trying to figure out how to get it out of its tiny hiding place.

The city sent another cellphone alert that the mountain lion had been located and a nearby school went into lockdown, said Lieutenant Mariano Elias, a spokesman for the San Francisco Fire Department.

The saga was just the latest in a long string of San Francisco animal happenings. In January, thousands of people attended the funeral of Claude, the albino alligator who had delighted crowds at the California Academy of Sciences for 17 years.

A few days before that, the city was abuzz about the news that a coyote had swum across the bay to Alcatraz Island, the site of a notorious former federal prison known as the Rock.

Late in 2025, Kit Kat, a beloved bodega cat, was struck and killed by a Waymo self-driving taxi, which started the city debating the merits of such vehicles.

Just after that, a newly appointed member of the Board of Supervisors had to resign after it was revealed that she had left her pet shop in horrific condition, with animal corpses in the freezer.

In 2024, a record 2,000 sea lions swamped the docks at Pier 39 with a deafening chorus of “Arf! Arf! Arf!” And the San Francisco Zoo has had a string of can-you-believe-it happenings – including a kidnapped lemur in 2020.

“San Franciscans do love their animals,” said Ms Cassandra Costello, the San Francisco Zoo’s interim co-chief executive.

“Animals are a great distraction from everyday life, so a mountain lion walking on city streets is something that really mesmerises the public,” she said.

Back at the mountain lion’s hiding spot, a state official was able to shoot a tranquilliser dart from above to render it motionless. Then a veterinarian from the local zoo shot two more darts from the side and ensured the animal was fully unconscious by prodding it with a pole and getting no response.

The crew was then able to pull the mountain lion into the garden and place it on an orange tarp for a medical exam. It appeared healthy, and an ear tag identified him as a male just under two years old who had grown up in a wooded area about 80km south of the city.

Young mountain lions often leave their families around that age, but it is not known exactly how or why he ventured all the way to the city.

As all this was happening, neighbours watched in awe – and with hope that the cat would survive the ordeal.

Ms Chloe Safier said neighbours had been joking that they should turn the side yard into a petting zoo with a sign reading “Home of the Mountain Lion”.

One neighbour, she said, was playing Wordle while watching and had plugged in L-I-O-N-S as her starting word.

“More than anything, I wanted this little cub to get home to his family,” Ms Safier said, noting that the capture had made her late to a work meeting, but that her colleagues understood “the mountain lion situation”.

After officials determined the mountain lion was healthy, but fully zonked out and temporarily harmless, they put a mask on him, strapped his legs together and loaded all 35kg of him into a metal cage.

The plan, officials said, was to release him back into his native South Bay habitat and hope that when it came to visiting San Francisco, once was enough.

With the mountain lion captured, Ms Safier was ready to relax. She took her baby boy to a nearby park – and there, by the playground, was a coyote. NYTIMES