Doorbell Camera Captures Mountain Lion Strolling into California Home

Doorbell cameras can be extremely useful for capturing events that otherwise might not be believed by other people. A recent mountain lion intrusion in California is a case in point.

Jeff Tenney was at his mother’s house in the kitchen when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. “Right away, I knew it was a mountain lion,” Tenney tells KTLA.

“As I headed toward the front door, the cat spotted me, panicked, and bolted out the back screen and splashed right into the pool.”

Tenney says everybody was okay and that his immediate concern was for his dog who was sleeping in the front yard. The only casualty was a pool floaty that the mountain lion destroyed during its frantic escape.

“I wasn’t scared. I was generally just, ultimately thinking about my dog, who was in the front yard,” Tenney tells WABC.

Tenney’s 13-year-old dog Bandit slept through the entire encounter. “By the time I came out here, he was up and kind of walking around, like he caught a scent or something, but never saw the mountain lion,” Tenney adds.

Tenney went and checked the footage of the mountain lion entering the property through the front door, which had been left open. He shared the footage to “notify the community” about the presence of mountain lions in the area.

“There were lots of kids running around that day, lots of parties going on, so we wanted to make sure we had that footage and alert the community,” Tenney says.

The incident took place about a month ago and there were no other reported sightings of a mountain lion in the neighborhood.

The city of La Verne, where the incident took place, isn’t “high in the mountains or deep in the woods.” It is described as a “normal neighborhood” where cougars don’t usually prowl.

That makes the doorbell camera footage even more important since, without it, people would have assumed that Tenney or Bandit broke the pool floaty.

Back in January, a Ring doorbell camera captured the sight and sound of a meteorite crashing to Earth for the first time ever.