Big cat, big fright: Cougar caught behind SE Bend home

A cougar lounging in a tree high above a southeast Bend home was tranquilized and captured by wildlife officials and law enforcement Friday afternoon as shocked neighbors watched and snapped photos.

“I just saw all the officers and I thought, what is going down?” said one woman who lives on the block. “I would have never thought it would be a cougar.”

Several agencies responded to the call from a resident off Polaris Court who said the cat was lying in a tree right off his back porch.

“A lot of times we get calls about cougars, and they’re not — it’s just a really large cat,” said Bend police Cpl. Rob Emerson. “It was in fact a cougar, so it was kind of exciting.”

Officers pointed guns at the cougar and made a plan — finally taking a ladder, climbing onto the roof and shooting it with a tranquilizer gun. Once it feel asleep in the tree, the mission become trickier: getting the 120-pound cat out of there.

“We climbed the tree, hooked a rope over it and lowered him down,” said Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Corey Heath. A team then lifted the cougar into a box to be taken to ODFW offices.

An examination of the cougar showed it was a young adult male. Heath said it was likely just passing through the area looking for deer that have come down from higher elevations for the winter.

Heath said the cougar would be killed, not relocated.

“A male adult cat in the middle of Bend is a human safety condition,” Heath said. “We’re not going to move that animal to become a problem in some other town, some other community.”

He said cougars are known to occupy a large range of territory, and catch-and-release efforts often don’t work.

Residents said plenty of cats, dogs and small children call the cul-de-sac home.

“My kids play on this street,” a woman said, “and they actually play at that house (where the cougar was found), so it concerns me they’re out wandering around here and there’s a cougar three doors down.”

Bend police said it’s been several years since a cougar was captured within the city limits; the last time was in northeast Bend.

Oregon is home to more than 5,000 cougars, also called mountain lions. Learn more at: http://www.dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/living_with/cougars.asp