Mountain Lions Move into Downtown Oceanside, California, with Deadly Results
Universal’s 2023 horror comedy Cocaine Bear tells an exaggerated version of a tragic and true story. In 1985, a drug smuggler flying over the Tennessee wilderness dumped 40 containers of cocaine, which were later discovered by an unfortunate back bear who partied so hard he died. It’s just one blockbuster-inspiring example of the strange ways humans and other animals interact at the boundaries of our habitats.
As our cities and suburbs creep further into wild spaces, the opportunity for unfortunate collisions between humans and wild animals continues to grow. On March 9, 2024, a juvenile mountain lion was found dead in downtown Oceanside, California, the victim of a car accident. That was only days after residents sighted a mount lion (possibly the same one) looking through movie theater windows and roaming the streets. Sightings were confirmed by the Oceanside Police Department and the animal was captured on surveillance footage in a courtyard and parking garage outside City Hall.
The mountain lion was struck by a single car near North River Road and Wilshire in Oceanside, reports NBC 7 San Diego. The driver was uninjured, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was contacted to analyze the deceased cat.
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Mountain Lion Killed in Downtown Oceanside Car Crash
A mountain lion stands at the entrance to a cave.
Authorities identified the animal as a young male, likely looking for its own piece of real estate. When young mountain lions reach between 14 and 18 months old, they leave home, and they mean business. Lions move an average of 2.3 miles per day during this dispersal period and juvenile males will move up to 400 miles away from their birthplace. When mountain lions are born within dispersal distance of a city, they sometimes find themselves where they don’t want to be.
Otherwise known as cougars, panthers, catamounts, or pumas, mountain lions inhabit the western part of North America and most of South America. They have the largest range of any wild animal in the Americas, ranging from Canada’s Yukon all the way to Chile.
They’re carnivorous predators which specialize on large prey like deer, elk, moose, and mountain goats. While they prefer wild habitats including forests, lowlands, mountains, and deserts, their huge range often brings them into contact with people, with potentially tragic consequences. They have no natural predators, so their only real threats are us and our cities.
In the modern world, non-human animals sometimes die in decidedly human ways, the victims of collisions with metal machines they can’t possibly understand or unintentional drug overdoses. We’ve built a weird world and it’s probably our responsibility to do a better job protecting mountain lions, bears, and other critters from it.
See what happens when humans and animals collide in Cocaine Bear, available from Universal Pictures.
