[thethirddegree]

Apparently the lion made ‘a furtive move’.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Meouw!

[old school]

80 pound, three-year-old male? Musta been a big house cat ‘cause mountain lions are much bigger!

[mgstarr]

Pretty wild - this is a short walk from my house.

[Navy Patriot]

Couldn't they offer the lion a child as a treat, and get it to go away?

After all the humans were encroaching on the lion's habitat.

[Talisker]

"Officers deployed a shotgun as well as a rifle, and the animal unfortunately was euthanized and died at the scene," said Santa Monica Police Sgt. Robert Almada said.

A shotgun and a rifle.

No grenades?

[miele man]

After watching the video on this, my first thought is this cat was not “euthanized”. While I don’t have the facts of this incident, I have to ask if the shooter actually hit the cat in the right place (or at all) with the dart gun? Did the Fish and Game people give it time to work? From the pix in the article, it surely looks like the cat was relaxed and comfortable enough to curl up in a resting/sleeping position in highly unfamiliar surroundings, ergo from the photographer’s position, a shot with a dart gun should’ve worked. Did the F&G folks panic when the cat began to move after being shot with a dart gun? Wouldn’t that be the obvious expectation, i.e., that it would try to move? Judging from the comments after the article, the natives are not too happy with the outcome, nor, possibly, should they be.

[muir_redwoods]

Did they run out of dogs to shoot?

[MasterGunner01]

Santa Monica Police expended 1,138 rounds of ammunition to down the 80-pound mountain lion. The mountain lion suffered two hits, none serious, and is expected to recover. When asked about the number of shots fired at the mountain lion, an astonished officer said, “Mountain lion? I thought it was a large, funny looking dog. Gee.”/s/