A mailman in a rural California town made a special delivery to Santa Barbara County Animal Services on Wednesday afternoon—an adorable mountain lion cub that apparently had been abandoned by its mother.
The unidentified postal worker in Lompoc had seen the small cougar in the same place around Cebada Canyon Road two days in a row so he figured it needed help, according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune. So he retrieved the female feline and took it to the animal shelter.
“She’s so pretty,” Dori Villalon, operations manager of the Santa Barbara County Animals Services, told the Tribune. “We are all very excited to have her here.”
Taking in a mountain lion is so rare for Santa Barbara County Animals Services that staff filed the animal under “domestic cat” in its computer system. A veteran technician then weighed the cougar, gave it some fluids for dehydration and fed it some baby food.
“She only weighs about three pounds,” Villalon told the Tribune. “Because she doesn’t feel very well, she’s very docile.”
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The cougar cub was transported Thursday to a rehabilitation facility in San Diego, but before it was picked up by California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the animal services staff had a difficult time keeping its distance from the cute cougar.
“Our goal with any wild animals, we want to see them get back to the wild,” Villalon said.
So the cougar cub was kept in an isolated area and staff stayed away so the cat’s chances of being rehabilitated and returned to the wild are increased.
Villalon told the Tribune that when people see baby animals in the wild and believe they have been abandoned they should call the animal experts rather than intervene on their own.
Many times the mother is simply hunting for food and will return for its young later. In this case, 24 hours passed without any sign of the mother, prompting the mailman’s action.
Photos courtesy of Santa Barbara County Animal Services.
