Orange County Homeowner Spots Mountain Lion Living Its Best Life And Taking A Little Midnight Swim

Orange County Homeowner Spots Mountain Lion Living Its Best Life

iStockphoto / JHaviv


  • A homeowner in Orange County, California filmed a wild encounter with a huge mountain lion prowling through their back yard
  • The house is located on Lake Mission Viejo and the mountain lion was filmed in the middle of the night poking around the dock before it dove off into the water for a swim
  • Read more BroBible Outdoors stories here

There’s something deeply unsettling about seeing a mountain lion parading around someone’s property in the middle of the night as if everything’s normal. A homeowner on Lake Mission Viejo in Orange County spotted exactly that, a massive cat sauntering around nonchalantly as if it was just another evening.

Valerie Strowski told a reporter from the local news she thought her husband was crazy when he woke her up after 1 in the morning on Saturday, March 20th to tell her a mountain lion was prowling their property. He was not crazy and Valerie soon realized this as she woke up and started filming the huge cat.

The video of this large cougar was filmed around 1:20 am and part of the reason Valerie was so disoriented is she says they don’t get ‘big animals’ in that part of the lake. Video evidence below would suggest otherwise… There are, in fact, some BIG animals lurking around in the shadows.

Lake Mission Viejo Homeowner Spots Orange County Mountain Lion Living Its Best Life

The homeowner told Mercury News she believes the massive mountain lion became fixated on a fake fish in their swimming pool. It hung around the pool for roughly fifteen minutes which seems like an extraordinarily long and tense amount of time to have a cougar chilling out by your pool. After that, the big kitty went for a swim…

According to the description of that YouTube video, the enormous mountain lion was later spotted swimming across Lake Mission Veijo. Mountain Lions are known to be able to swim but typically only do so when it’s necessary. it isn’t common to see one hop in the water and go for a leisurely swim.

How Common Are Attacks From Cougars?

If you’re like me and aren’t that familiar with mountain lion data, you’ll be surprised by how many (or how few) of these big cats there are in the United States. According to the most reliable data, there are an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 mountain lions spread out across the Western United States (primarily across 10 states, give or take a handful). So let’s call it roughly 30,000 mountain lions in the USA.

With 30,000 cougars in the USA, there are probably a lot of attacks on humans every year, right? Wrong.

There have only been 27 fatal attacks recorded in North America in the past 100 years. The most recent one occurred in Mount Hood National Forest in 2018 and it was the first-ever fatal cougar attack recorded in Oregon.

Man Chased By Mountain Lion Stops Attack By Roaring Back (Video)

Back in January, this footage surfaced and this encounter also happened in Southern California.

Mountain Lion Survival 101 says that if you are ever approached you want to make yourself as intimidating as humanly possible. Make yourself big. Yell as loud as you can. Throw your arms up high and signal to the puma that you are not an easy meal, you are a predator. You can also punch it in the face if all else fails. And that’s what makes this video below a great example of how to react in an encounter such as this.

The roar works. He was booking it down that hill near Pyramid Lake with the mountain lion chasing him. He stopped, turned around, and roared back at the kitty who then retreated into the bushes and stayed hidden. His key to surviving the encounter unscathed was making himself appear as loud and big as possible. That’s why this really is a fantastic example of what to do in a survival situation such as this.