Big Cat In Orinda?

No photographic evidence this time but Lamorinda Patch is hearing from readers in Orinda that a mountain lion is moving around the hills and ridgetops above Glorietta Boulevard.

Neighbors up that way managed to get a snapshot of a coyote recently, but so far no pictures of the cat.

Susan Heckly, director of wildlife rehabilitation at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek, said there have been recent sightings of a mountain lion in Paso Nogal Park (open space area) in Pleasant Hill, and said she "would not be surprised" if one had been seen in Orinda.

The last definitive sighting of a ranging cougar was back in June, when one of the tawny cats was spotted above Ivy Drive in Orinda and another (possibly the same cat) was seen loping along Rheem Boulevard in Moraga.

A mountain lion that wandered into a residential area of Redwood City was shot and killed by a state Department of Fish and Game warden just last month.

Authorities on the scene concluded that it was too risky to try to tranquilize the cougar after it was found hunkered down in a narrow gap between two fences.