Just a false alarm!
California residents were on edge after police warned them about a mountain lion sighting caught on a neighbor’s security camera — though, it turned out just to be a large domestic cat.
South San Francisco Police Department put out a statement notifying residents of the false alarm after realizing what they thought was a mountain lion had just been “a big cat.”
“We were able to confirm the Big Cat was not a mountain lion,” police announced on social media. “We are happy to report there is no potential threat for the neighborhood. That’s a BIG cat!” the police department made clear.
During the early morning of March 26 around 7 a.m., a South San Francisco resident briefed police about seeing a mountain lion on a Ring camera roaming on their fence line.
Officers arrived to the location to thoroughly check the area, but they reported no findings of what the resident feared was a mountain lion.
Located just 10 miles outside of San Francisco, South San Francisco is no stranger to mountain lions who are native to California’s San Francisco Bay area.
Area residents are constantly on high alert for mountain lions, with approximately 4,500 of the big cats located statewide, according to the UC Davis California Mountain Lion Project, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Mountain lion encounters with humans are rare in California, but attacks can happen.
The last recorded attack was in September 2022 when a 7-year-old was bitten by a mountain lion at Pico Canyon Park, located in Los Angeles County, according to California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“We’d like to remind our residents to avoid mountain lions, even at a distance a brief glimpse should be cause for alarm,” South San Francisco Police still warned residents despite the recent panic.
“If confronted with a mountain lion, make your presence known; make noise, try to make yourself appear bigger & back away slowly,” they added.
Social media users had a little laugh about the scare, with some California residents familiar with mountain lion sightings joking about the Ring camera footage.
“I have seen plenty of mountain lions, but that is just a hefty house cat,” one comment read under the police department’s posting of the house cat on Facebook.
“If that is what she considered a mountain lion, I hate to see what she would consider my house cats!” another person joked.
