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A 19-year-old man in Arroyo Grande, California had a mysterious encounter last week while dirt biking. He says a mountain lion jumped from a tree and swatted at him, but officials claim it was a domesticated house cat. So, what happened, and why would officials deny this teen’s claim that a mountain lion attacked him while dirt biking?
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TheSan Luis Obispo County Tribunefirst reported the story, asserting that it was actually a house cat that pounced at the unidentified teen. The Tribune makes this assertion based on the results from a DNA sample sent to the California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Wildlife Forensic Laboratory. But, complicating matters, the teen has pet cats at home. Could the house cat DNA have been from his pets?
The Attack Story
Here’s the mountain-lion attack story from the dirt biker’s view.
The young man was riding his dirt bike on July 3 when he saw what he described to The Tribune as an animal the size of a large dog “drop from the tree.” He says the animal barely missed him as he passed the tree at about 20 mph. After briefly glimpsing the large animal, he grabbed the throttle to get out of the area, but “something grabbed his helmet and ripped him back,” the Tribune reports based on an interview with the teen.
“I was almost knocked down,” he told the news outlet.
Scared, the teen rode away quickly, without looking back. The young man says he did return to the area later to investigate. “There was nothing I could have hit my head on, no tree had fallen,” he told The Tribune.
The Aftermath
After the incident, the teen reported being sore, especially in his neck, and that he suffered “a minor concussion.” But here’s where things get really weird. After reporting the incident to wildlife officials, Fish and Wildlife collected samples from the teen’s helmet and clothes. They sent away the samples and got only one thing back: house cat DNA.
The teen, whose father requested that his son remains anonymous, suggests there was no mountain lion DNA on him because the animal never fully latched onto him. Rather, he says it just grazed him. The force was enough to jerk him back but not enough to knock him off his bike.
It’s possible no one will ever know what really happened, but it’s hard to believe that a 19-year-old person wouldn’t be able to tell a house cat from a mountain lion. At the same time, the teen admits that everything happened so quickly that he didn’t have much time to process. His priority was to get to safety.
The teen may not have the DNA evidence to prove it, but he now has a pretty wild story to tell his friends.
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