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Boulder Creek Man Describes Close Encounter With Mountain Lions

BOULDER CREEK (KPIX 5) – A Santa Cruz Mountains resident recently managed to capture an incredible close encounter with two mountain lions playing outside his bedroom window.

Ben Slaughter lives in a remote area of Boulder Creek where encounters with wildlife are not unusual.

However, what he saw outside his bedroom last Monday night was anything but normal.

"It just looked like two house cats playing. It wasn't super aggressive," said Slaughter.

Except these weren't two housecats. They were two full-grown mountain lions playing outside Slaughter's Boulder Creek cottage.

Slaughter woke up in middle of the night Monday to the sound of his dog growling. When he looked outside he saw what was upsetting his pet.

"My jaw dropped. I was not expecting that looking out my curtain," explained Slaughter. "I was thinking it was the neighbor's dog or some cats running around or a raccoon. But it was totally different; it was two mountain lions."

Slaughter said he woke his girlfriend up, grabbed his phone and started recording.

He estimated the mountain lions stuck around for about 20 minutes and seemed unaware or completely uninterested in the two awestruck humans with the barking dog watching from the other side of a very thin windowpane.

"They were completely enveloped in what they were doing. They didn't have any care for me or the dog barking or the light," said Slaughter.

The mountain lions weren't wearing a collar and aren't being tracked by researchers. Scientists who looked at the cell phone clip told KPIX 5 it wasn't clear from the video if this was a couple of juveniles or a mated pair.

Slaughter said the animals eventually seemed to tire of the spotlight and wandered off into the night.

"They kind of just looked at each other one last time and then wandered off in different directions," said Slaughter.

The two short clips that Slaughter posted on Facebook have been viewed over 1.35 million times and shared nearly 12,000 since March 5.

While this is the first time these animals have been spotted on this property, the owner says she has seen a half dozen mountain lions in the area in just the past six months.

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