Ridge Meadows RCMP shot and killed a female cougar early Wednesday after it had attacked and killed a dog in a back yard on Marc Road.
Police got the call about 4 a.m., and learned that the lab had been taken from its porch.
It wasn’t long before police found the cougar in a nearby ravine.
“The cougar was located very close to the dog and was dispatched on site,” said conservation service officer James Kelly.
The cougar was a skinny female, though not emaciated, weighing about 30 kilograms. He added that the behaviour of the animal can determine whether an animal is shot or not.
Most cougars are elusive and will run or climb a tree when they hear people approaching.
But this one didn’t move and just laid beside its kill.
“It is a bit of odd behaviour.”
Kelly said it wasn’t a case of the cat just catching a dog that was running loose in the forest.
This on “came right up to the house to get the dog.”
That showed it didn’t have much fear of people.
So far this year the conservation service has received a normal number of calls about cougars. But often, people mistake coyotes or bobcats for cougars.
Lisa Matheson, who lives nearby, has seen cougars before in the area that adjoins the UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest.
“What was interesting for me, I took my [two] big dogs out last night at about 6:30 p.m.” They took off into the bush in pursuit of something, she said.
Kelly didn’t know if the cougar was the same animal reported to have injured a dog in Golden Ears Provincial Park earlier in the week.
“That’s impossible to say.”
The distance from where that happened to Marc Road is about four kilometres.
“Definitely within a cougar’s range.”