IRVINE, Calif. (KNX) — A 113-pound mountain lion surprised customers at an Irvine hair salon on Tuesday afternoon as he ran past the shop, then collided with a glass door.
“I was standing at the front desk and a client says, ‘Oh my God,’” Elliot Matthews, an employee at Bishops Cuts and Colors in Sand Canyon Plaza, told The Orange County Register. “All I saw at first was this big thing and tail.”
Employees quickly shut the salon’s front door just before the big cat ran into the glass. The shopping center then went into temporary lockdown as law enforcement attempted to capture the animal.
“Surprisingly, people were still getting their hair cut,” Matthews said.
At one point, the stressed cat ran into another building with a door ajar, Rebeecca Barboza, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told the Register. People inside that building were able to safely move to another floor.
The cat, trapped inside with no way out, was then tranquilized by a veterinarian on the scene.
“The cat was trying to get out and trying to find a place to go, so it was just sitting in corners and it climbed up on tables,” said Dr. Scott Weldy of Serrano Animal and Bird Hospital.
The sedated mountain lion was then transferred to Weldy’s clinic for a check-up and to be affixed with a tracking collar.
No injuries were reported in connection with the incident. The lion will be released into an appropriate habitat, Fish and Wildlife officials said, though they did not give specifics on location as a matter of policy.
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