LOS ANGELES _ The lion slinks through the chaparral, a blur of movement in the night. Head held lower than his shoulders, he scours the brush in a ravine just south of Travel Town in Griffith Park.
Hind paws land where the forepaws lift. No twig snaps, no crinkling leaf. He's silent, an ambush predator, always hunting, always looking for opportunity.
Inside a small gray box on his neck, a microprocessor switches on to calculate and time-stamp his location _ 21:00, Dec. 2, 2016 _ one of 56 readings made in the course of week. The coordinates reveal the lion's rambling course through this island of wilderness in the midst of the city.
As famous as he is, the mountain lion known as P-22 is a mystery, his day-to-day life hidden by his instincts for evasion.
The National Wildlife Federation has called the species a "nearly perfect predator," and among its survival skills, developed over 4 million years of evolution, is a talent for invisibility.
What evolution did not prepare P-22 for is how to exist in an 8-square-mile urban park with more than 5 million human visitors a year. Most male cats have almost 20 times that space, nearly to themselves.
On this night, his ears twitch to a distant rustling, another creature's lapse of caution. It comes from a steep gully, overgrown by willows.
P-22 turns his head in advance of the quick and deadly attack to come.
