Posted 9:44 PM by Floyd

There's no pleasing some people, 5/17/2004 edition:

Palo Alto police shot and killed a mountain lion at about 1 p.m. today following a tense eight-hour search in which they failed to capture the stealthy cat. Neighbors said it was shot in the front yard of a house on the 1500 block of Walnut Drive, after a black Labrador dog named Kelsey chased it up a tree.

...

Police had launched a search for the mountain lion in the morning. There were a series of reported sightings between 4:45 a.m. and 7 a.m., including near the Hyatt Rickeys hotel.

Not everyone felt good about how things turned out. Linda Snyder of San Jose called the Mercury News to express her anger that the cat died, and that the officers who arrived at the house after the cat was treed didn't have a tranquilizer gun.

``The mountain lion was up a tree, chased there by a dog,'' Snyder said. ``It was scared. It wasn't hurting anybody . . . Why were they just equipped to kill?''

Gosh, now why would animal control officers want to kill a 108-pound mountain lion? I mean, besides the fact, mentioned later in the article, that a mountain lion killed one bicyclist and injured another in Orange County last January?


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