the TEETH
Wild animal attack stories firsthand from the survivors. Hosted by wilderness kayak guide, wildlife photographer, and the survivor of a few attacks himself, Jeremy Carberry
the TEETH
P-22: LEGEND OF THE LOS ANGELES PUMA
A mountain lion living within the city of Los Angeles?!?! This is a deep dive into the full life history of the legend known as P-22. He crossed multiple freeways to co-exist right in the center of millions of people for years and definitely got himself into some trouble along the way... Featuring interviews with the people who discovered him and were involved and impacted by his life...
Further reading and resources: Cougar Conservancy
Check out the: Strange Animals Podcast Here
P-22: Legend of the Los Angeles Puma
The TEETH Podcast - Season 2, Episode 9
Note: The TEETH Podcast has been created for the ear and is meant to be heard. If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotions, music and, sound effects that do not translate to print. We generate transcripts that we hope make for enjoyable reading using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please confirm the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
P-22 DAY
“Hey, I’m Jeremy, what’s your name?”
Ivan: “Ivan”
Jeremy: “How old are you?”
Ivan: “Seven”
Jeremy: “What do you think of P-22?”
Ivan: “I think he’s pretty nice and cool”
Jeremy: “What would you do if you saw I’m in person?”
Ivan: “I would just like leave him alone”
Ivan is a pretty rad kid attending a big outdoor event in Los Angeles called P-22 Day. He was nice enough to let me distract him from his mission of coloring in a portrait of the famous mountain lion with crayons. This is his mom, Marleen. Jeremy: “Why are you here?” Marleen: “For P-22, to celebrate his life that he had and such and amazing journey that he had and how he was loved so much by LA”
There’s live music and other performances going on it’s a full on event with thousands of people. You might be thinking a whole festival for one cat? You’re not alone this is Scot Nery, who co-produces this podcast with me.
Scot: “I was expecting it could either be like really boring…or it could be funny that people were working too hard to make a festival about a cat…and then when I got here I realized it’s more about nature conservation and stuff like that…”
Scot’s skepticism is both why I love him and also why i am sometimes annoyed with him… but the point he makes is spot on and it’s something that I didn’t really realize, until I started talking to people at p22 day… This one cat is so important because he represents something much bigger, he is a great example of nature and humans coexisting… and this coexistence is scary, imperfect, unpredictable, messy and also really beautiful and inspiring.
GRIFFITH PARK
That was 2023…Let’s go back in time a little over a decade to the evening of FEB 12th, 2012 it’s 9:15pm…
You are flying West over the very dark desert and mountains for hours and then a glow faintly appears way off in the distance it stretches as far as you can see from left to right… as you slowly get closer, the glow becomes brighter stretching along the Pacific coast from Mexico through San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles all the way up to Ventura County, over 200 hundred miles uninterrupted light! The first time i saw it, it took my breath away… the massive scale is just beyond words. You can only get a small hint of how populated Southern California is from land. You really need to be very high up in a plane…
City streets form glowing grids, highways look like flowing rivers of lava, residential neighborhoods, industrial zones, marinas, all producing light. Dense human civilization of over 20 million people huddled with the dark desert one one side and on the other a sharp contrasted cutoff from the glow of lights to dark black …. the Pacific Ocean. The epicenter of the light is Los Angeles and in the center of that is Griffith Park, even if you don’t know it, you’ve seen in it photos and movies… it’s where the Hollywood sign is… From the plane, Griffith Park is a dark spot…completely surrounded in every direction by glowing city and sprawl.
Imagine Central Park in NYC, now change the topography dramatically by putting it over a few large hills and multiply the overall size by 5! Griffith Park is over 4k acres, 17 square kilometers, 6 square miles!
Underneath you in that dark spot a camera trap is triggered and flashes a photo that no one sees but when they do it will make history.
INTRO
You are listening to the TEETH podcast where we usually bring you wild animal attack stories firsthand from the survivors. Today I’m really excited to share a very inspiring BONUS story that is a bit different than the usual format of this show. It’s the life history of the mountain lion, Puma-22 also known as P-22. Even though he was my neighbor for years I never once saw or heard him in person but following his journey and what he overcame to survive has had a significant impact on me and the way i think about the natural world around me. I hope this tribute will inspire you.
DISOVERY
Miguel: “My name is Miguel Ordenana. I am a wildlife biologist and environmental educator with the Naturalist Museum of Los Angeles County. A lot of people, like myself, grew up here thinking that LA is devoid of nature and we’re here basically showing people that they are here and have been in the past but that you can go out with us and study them”
Miguel has spent a lot of time carefully observing coyotes and other wildlife that have acclimated to city life. In his time growing up and working in LA, on multiple occasions, Miguel heard rumors or so-called eye witness accounts of a mountain lion living in Los Angeles…
“It was like this urban myth that people would talk about but everybody was like ‘that’s impossible’. I was part of a grass-roots project with the Friends of Griffith Park where we put out these cameras to look at connectivity issues between Griffith Park and neighboring open spaces”
In early 2012 it was Miguel’s responsibility to go and unlock and tend to the camera traps, Later he was scrolling through photos taken by an automated camera that was placed near the Ford Theater on the Hollywood side of Griffith Park… There were photos of deer, a bobcat, raccoon, and then…
Miguel: “and then finally when I saw it, I almost fell out of my chair, scrambled for my telephone…it wasn’t there…I realized it was in my car, I ran two blocks barefoot to my car…left these frantic, high-pitched voicemails to my colleagues and my wife, now wife… Nobody picked up! I had this intense kinda moment…it was like seeing Bigfoot or the Chupacabra for the first time! I was just so excited to share with people but at the same time in my brain I was thinking, ‘How did this animal get here? Is it going to survive? How are people going to respond’”?
Jeremy: “Did you think that somebody was playing a prank on you?”
Miguel: “I did not think that someone was playing a prank but some biologists that, i’m not going to name any names, thought that he was found in an area that was right up against the Hollywood Hills that some famous movie star let one of their exotic pets out and when they would take the blood samples they would find out…oh it’s some inbred mountain lion from Montana…or something like that”
The Mountain Lion was trapped and given a sedative, it turns out it was a previously undocumented male mountain lion with no tag or collar…about 2 years old and weighing 120 pounds. Blood was taken and a tag and radio collar were attached so researches could keep track of him. No one knew where he came from, where he was going or what he was doing in Los Angeles. The blood results came back and answered some of those questions using genetics:
Miguel: “It turned out that his dad was actually one of the mountain lions studied by the Park Service in the Western Santa Monicas”
That’s the Santa Monica Mountains about 20 miles 30 something kilometers West of Griffith Park and more unbelievably… separated by multiple freeways…
Mountain lions give birth to between 1 and 4 cubs but it’s estimated that only 1 in 6 survive to adulthood… Each lion needs to learn all of the intricacies of how to hunt and survive from their mom, this takes over a year.
At around 18 months old the mom has taught the cubs everything she can and she chases them off to go live their own lives. The females can stay in the general area if there is enough food to support them. The males, however, must move on. The alpha male roams a territory that is usually over a 100 miles or 160 kilometers and if he comes across another male he will try to kill him. another male is both competition for food and mates. As a young adult, P-22 had to move on except the Santa Monica Mountains are surrounded by the ocean to the South and West the 101 freeway to the North and to the East you have the 405 freeway… He risked his life by crossing at least two freeways to get to Griffith Park. Each having around 7 lanes of traffic in each direction that go all day and all night… It was hypothesized that a Mountain lion could cross the highways and some have tried, but unfortunately got hit and killed by vehicles in the process…
P-22 is the the first and only confirmed lion to have made it across alive! It was a major accomplishment…
At the time, I lived less than a mile from Griffith Park and the idea of being neighbors with a mountain lion and simultaneously living in the second most populated city in the country was pretty mind-blowing! In 2012 Soon after his discovery I went out into Griffith park with my siblings one night specifically to look for P-22. I don’t know really what our plan was. We didn’t have a direction or a camera but There was just an excitement of knowing that there was a mountain lion in the same park that we knew so well. We didn’t see P-22 and apparently at that point, no one else had either, except the team that trapped and radio collared him. P-22 was a master of evasion and was very quietly existing without any humans noticing him at all…
STEVE WINTER
There was one guy who made it his mission to notice P-22. This man is photographer, Steve Winter and he’s not just going for a photograph…. he’s laser focused on getting a photo of P-22 with the Hollywood Sign behind him. He setup multiple camera traps and practiced on coyotes and bobcats and pretty much anything else including humans that walked past his camera traps to make sure he had the angle and lighting right so he could capture his subject with the Hollywood Sign in the background at night (whenever P-22 was active).
Day after day he would optimistically check his camera traps only to be disappointed. But he didn’t give up. Then A full year went by with no mountain lion… There was no guarantee P-22 was even still in Griffith Park… In a press release the National Park Service said: quote: “scientists do not expect P-22 to stay in the park for an extended period of time” Can you imagine the frustration?! Compared to the usual hundreds of miles of roaming territory, Griffith park It’s six square miles… you know this lion is zig zagging all around the park chasing deer around and you have multiple camera traps set up and have captured not ONE photo this ghost?!!?
I would give up…but Steve does not, after about 14 months of nothing Steve gets a tip from a biologist…
Steve: “And he found a trail that he said ’This is perfect, it’s dark where that cat’s at and no people walk this trail, only animals”
He got a photo of P22 with the Hollywood Sign in the background…
Steve: “And finally after 15 months, I got the first picture”
but like P22 himself… Steve is stubborn,
Steve: “I didn’t like it”
Even though it took him over 14 months to get one photo of P22, he’s not happy with it… so he changes the settings of his camera to adjust…
Steve: “Went and changed the lighting so it just kind of hits P-22 because we knew exactly where he was going to go from the first image”
Fortunately it didn’t take another 14 months to get a second shot…
only a month later with the camera in the exact same spot…
Steve: “Oh I got it. It’s a 4 second exposure”
The original camera trap photo that captured P-22 back in 2012 made the news and a lot of people found out that a mountain lion was in Griffith Park but Steve’s photo was on a whole other level.
The DEC 2013 National Geographic magazine features Steve’s photo for the story titled: “Ghost Cats Radio collars and camera traps reveal the haunts of the elusive cougar – in L.A. and beyond”
… Even though P-22 had been in LA for almost 2 years…this single photo really put P-22 on the map and everyone everywhere all of the sudden knew about him
News: “Everyone around the world knows that the Hollywood Sign towers over Los Angeles…known for it’s sprawling urban landscape, wide freeways of concrete and tarmac, not necessarily for it’s wildlife, however there scientists have found a mountain lion!”
Mithra Derakshan was among the many people who were impacted by that photo… She was 650 miles away from Los Angeles, at college in Northern California,
Mithra: “I grew up in LA and I left LA to go study at Humboldt State University because I wanted to become a park ranger and I thought there is no way I could do that living in Los Angeles. When I was there that’s when I found out there was a mountain lion living in Griffith Park and I saw that just beautiful photo of P-22 by Steve Winter in front of the Hollywood Sign… and I was just blown away! The amount of times I’ve hiked in Griffith Park, the amount of times I’ve enjoyed that area…I’ve gone to Travel Town as a kid…”
Jeremy: “So P-22 literally changed your life?”
Mithra: “He literally changed my life. I ended up coming back to LA and working for Santa Monica Mountains instead of going to a park far away, maybe Hawaii Volcanos maybe Grand Canyon ya know, places where in your mind that you think, ‘these are wild, natural spaces’ but he motivated me to come back to LA and change my life and spend the rest of my life working in Southern CA to help promote and protect human-wildlife coexistence”
Mithra is currently a ranger in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area where P-22 was born.
MANGE
A few months later, in March 2014, P-22 was captured to replace the battery in his radio collar. When the scientists opened the cage they found a poisoned mountain lion barely holding onto life. His skin was rashed and had chunks of fur missing from mange, which is a parasitic disease… The poison was from anticoagulant rodenticides or “AR’s” also known as Rat poison. Los Angeles definitely has some rats and rat poisons are used to temporarily kill off rats. I say “temporarily” because the poison doesn’t really solve the problem, more rats show up later to replace the rats that were poisoned and the rats that are poisoned don’t die right away either… the anticoagulants in the poison prevent the blood from clotting so it’s a long, slow and extremely painful death. These rats that are internally bleeding to death are wandering around like drunken zombies and become very easy targets for predators, like coyotes, foxes, owls, and sometimes mountain lions, or the mountain lion will eat one of the other animals that ate a poisoned rat and get the poison indirectly. Multiple mountain lions in Southern CA have died from this rat poison building up in their bodies. It’s unclear exactly how the poison is related to the mange but my guess is that when the immune system is compromised by the poison they become vulnerable to parasites and disease. Have you ever seen one of those uplifting videos where there is an abandoned dog in a sewer that no one cares about and then a hero comes along and pulls up the dog and nurses it back to health? well the before picture of that abandoned dog where it’s all skinny and missing fur and covered in mites and fleas? That’s mange.
Not to get too carried away with side stories but this one is super interesting. A few years ago someone photographed what I can only describe as a demonic looking creature in Texas as proof of the chupacabra existing. Turns out it was not photoshopped and was 100% authentic. The creature was even captured and after doing some blood tests, it did not have unique DNA, it turns out it was a coyote with mange causing it to lose most of it’s fur and look like a cryptid from unknown haunted realm.
In addition to killing mountain lions, these poisons also kill hawks, owls, foxes and anything else that hunts and kills mice and rats. It’s a very serious problem, especially in CA where over 80% of the predators tested had at least one type of rat poison in their system.
You might be thinking, “Well that’s unfortunate, but I don’t want rats and mice in my house… so what do I do?”
So glad you asked… The best way to get rid of pests is to get rid of their food source. Make sure your trash and leftover human and pet food is stored in rat-proof containers and trash cans. As far as exterminating the existing pests, the most effective and environmentally safe way is traps. The three most popular are electrocuting, glue and snap. In my experience, I want to know where the dead rat is and if it’s in a trap I can throw it into the woods or the trash. If the rat slowly dies of poisoning, it has plenty of time to wander into some impossible to reach location, and THEN you are going to be smelling a rotting animal for a while, which will make you want to move out of your house.
The takeaway is killing off rodents with poison only addresses infestation problems temporarily… This is because the poison is also killing off the rats’ natural predators, when there are less natural predators and the next wave of rodents eventually come back you will have an apocalyptic hell-scape on your hands… and you’ll be begging for backup from the foxes, owls, coyotes and others…
https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/news/gp-lion-exposed-to-poison.htm
I remember seeing and reading about this and as soon as I saw the photo I thought… it was so tragic.. but was also impressed that he lasted over two years in Los Angeles…. most wanna be actors or singers leave and give up before two years… and it wasn’t that he “gave up” it was just that this rat poison got to him…but there was never any news that he had passed…there wasn’t really any P-22 news at all… until a year later…
CRAWLSPACE
News: “Imagine coming face to face with this beast? Homeowners Jason and Paula Archinaco, ’They were in the crawlspace, crawling around doing work until, HOLY BANNANAS there’s a mountain lion!”
The HOLY BANNANAS is there were some guys working on a house next to Griffith Park and they got underneath the house and came face to face with a full grown mountain lion! Just minding his own business not trying to cause any trouble… He had a radio collar… it was P22.
News: “Wildlife experts spent hours doing there best to coax the giant cat out of the crawlspace. They tried firing bean bags, even tennis balls"
Ok this is real…it actually happened in April 2015… and my favorite part of this story is as p-22 is being inundated with all kinds of non lethal projectiles and loud noises, he looks completely calm… he doesn’t even blink. He calls their bluff and just assumes they are all talk. P-22 just sits there completely unbothered as all of these objects are being launched at him… What a boss!
Fortunately the owners of the house Jason and Paula are pretty chill about the whole thing…
News Reporter: “People around the country must be surprised to hear you say ‘aaah…there’s a mountain lion in my house… big deal’”
Jason: “Maybe, I mean when you buy a house that’s one street away from the park you have to expect that you’re gonna have animals come and go so we have to always have to take precautions”
At P-22 Day I ran into Laura Hughes who lived down the street from and remembers this incident pretty well…
Laura: “I had seen it pop online and we ended up being pretty close and I felt both scared and then like no this is amazing and it just really started me thinking about the way that we share space on this planet in a way that I hadn’t before but I had a lot of conflicting feelings… and I still kinda do…”
Despite having some natural fear of the large predator, Laura also says she felt a little...
Laura: “Jealous of them even though I didn’t know what to do at that point…so I just remember wanting… it was like being visited by Santa or a magical fairy…I wanted to be part of that story…yeah…”
So back to P-22 being blasted by beanbags and tennis balls…
NEWS: “Nothing worked…but overnight P-22 decided to leave on his own accord”
P-22 found another place to hang out the next day… he was probably thinking “y’all are kinda intense… not exactly the relaxing vibe i’m going for, bro…”
When I heard about a healthy P-22 hiding under the house, I was confused on what happened with the previous mange episode… I found out later that when the scientists found p22 with mange and rat poison they gave him vitamin K and apparently that and P22’s natural grit and determination to survive yet another near death experience… got him healthy again!
NEWS: “But we’re sure we’ll be seeing this mountain lion, who seems to love attention, sometime soon”
Really? Loves attention? I get the exact opposite from P22’s actions. The only way we even know he exists is from a camera trap because he’s an expert at avoiding humans and avoiding attention. A full year goes by where he goes completely under the radar. I don’t know about you but I don’t know anyone who hides under a house to get attention, it seems to me like he was under there to completely avoid attention… This kind of cheese-ball reporting is really ramping up around this time and, I apologize in advance, it does gets worse…
KILLARNEY THE KOALA
NEWS: “Other Animals at the Los Angeles Zoo may have witnessed the crime but they’re not talking!” News: “Los Angeles being rocked by a murder-mystery!”
News: “Today visitors to the Los Angeles Zoo will not be able to see the popular koala bears. All the koalas have been moved indoors for their safety”
My favorite P-22 story is what happened in the Los Angeles Zoo on March 3rd, 2016, almost exactly one year after he was found under the house…
News: ”…are trying to piece together who or what killed their oldest koala…the main suspect caught on zoo security cameras is P-22, the Hollywood mountain lion…”
I imagine all of these news anchors see this story roll out across their desk and their eyes just light up! Oh thank GOD a new story! So sick of talking about traffic and RENT…
News: “One of it’s koalas disappeared from it’s habitat…about probably 40yards from that space, the staff found a puff of fur, no blood…a few minutes later the rest of the koala was found…mauled”
Apparently there was footage of P-22 strolling through the zoo during after-hours but no footage of him actually jumping into the koala enclosure and grabbing Killarney the 14 year old female. I mean she has “Kill” in her name….Killarney…
Some said it could have been a bobcat or coyote… I’ve also seen a lot of great horned owls in Griffith Park and they can kill house cats… but in all likely hood, it was P-22. He was in the zoo that night and is by far the most capable predator in the park.
News: “As for the zoo itself right now the walls there are 9’ tall they are considering completely getting rid of that fence and building a new fence 15’ tall”
That’s a proposal to increase the fence from less than 3 meters to about 4 and a half…. keep in mind this is the local news, who knows if it’s even accurate…but if you listened to our Mountain Lion episode last month, you may remember that mountain lions are pound for pound the strongest cat in the world and are capable of jumping straight up vertically 18 feet 5 meters so even increasing your fence size wouldn’t keep the mountain lion out…
Killarney’s incident ruffled some feathers and there was a proposition to remove P22 from Griffith Park. It seems kind of backwards thinking to get rid of a native species in order to protect an animal from Australia that you can easily just put inside of an enclosure to keep it safe at night.
Also, Mountain Lions, especially males often return to their preferred territories and can casually travel hundreds of miles to do so, if P22 was removed he might try to cross all of those highways to return, which would very likely get him killed… so fortunately they let him be…
2016
2016 was also the first P-22 day in Griffith Park.
I met Korinna Domingo at a later P-22 day and she told me about how he changed how she views what is “wild” and what is “city”
Korinna: “Opened my eyes to all the wildlife and the urban wildlife that surrounds us…whether it’s a mountain lion in the coastal chaparral or it’s a lady bug in the crack of a sidewalk…there is wildlife all around us and he truly switched my viewpoint”
This is Robin who lives right on the boundary of Griffith Park,
Robin: “For me P-22 symbolizes more of a conscious effort to acknowledge that there was something here before we were, before LA was built”
The following year is 2017. P-22 laid low and stayed out of the headlines for his actions… but a lot of the people he inspired were doing things and making things about the now very famous cat. P-22 got his own documentary titled “The Cat that Changed America”
Angel City Brewery in Los Angeles created a Hazy Pale Ale named P-22 which has a light brown color.
LA natural history museum opened a full P-22 Exhibit which featured the cat and how it fits into the local natural ecosystem.
WOOLSEY FIRE
News: “Not only people but wildlife were also greatly impacted by the Woolsey Fire”
in November of 2018 the Woolsey Fire burned close to 100,000 acres of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The fire was not fully contained until 2 weeks after it started…
News: “Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area gave an update on some of the wildlife they monitor in the fire zone. Of the 13 mountain lions with GPS collars in and around the Santa Monica Mountains, 5 are unaccounted for, among the 5 mountain lions missing is the famous P-22”
In Southern California, fire is a natural and essential part of the ecosystem. Fires clean out dead underbrush and fallen trees and create space and fertile soil for new plants to grow. Generally speaking, the native animals to these habitats have adapted and are remarkably good at getting away from the flames and smoke but when you have a very limited range to begin with, it’s very possible to get trapped or cornered against buildings or highway walls… this has happened to at least one mountain lion in the Santa Monica Mountains.
News: “The famous mountain lion known as P-22 is alive. There had been concern the big cat was killed in the wild fire when experts couldn’t track him but now the tracking system is back up and running after some issues and P-22 is moving around normally”
QUIET YEARS
P-22 just keeps on going and going…
Our unwilling celebrity enjoyed a few years of being out of the spot light for the most part as he celebrated his 8th and 9th birthdays, then he turned 10 years old. Unfortunately he celebrated them alone, no mate ever wandered across the freeways to meet him and the reason for that is the females have less reason to move out and find new territory. They aren’t being pushed out by the alpha male in their territory like p22 was… Griffith park also doesn’t have enough territory and food for multiple mountain lions… I mean it was thought there was not enough territory for even one mountain lion but as we know, P-22 does not follow our expectations in any way shape or form…
Jumping ahead to 2021 our hero was captured for a Health Checkup which he passed with flying colors as an 11 year old cat!
The average lifespan of a male mountain lion is between 8 and 10 years… so not only did p-22 outlive everyone’s estimations of how long a mountain lion could survive within the city of Los Angeles but he also outlived the average mountain lion living in ideal habitat with a much larger range… He’s just an amazingly resilient individual that adapted to what scientists assumed would be too small of a habitat for a lion and found a way to survive!
In 2021 a mural was painted in Watts to pay homage to the great Puma-22 I imagine he didn’t care either way though…he just wanted to be left alone.
The scientists following P-22 via his tracking collar are regularly finding deer carcasses that he has killed and find P-22 hiding out during the day completely out of sight of humans. Camera traps show p22 at night moving along some of the same trails as humans that are doing a late night walk or jog and p22 will jump off the trail and hide in the brush right before a human goes by. It’s very clear after multiple years that this animal is consistently avoiding humans and prefers hunting and eating deer… but in 2022 something changes…
SOMETHING CHANGES
News Reporter: “a mountain lion was spotting roaming the streets here in Silverlake and not just any mountain lion, no, we are talking about P-22.” Resident: “I saw the mountain lion, you know my dog starting freaking out at like 4:30 in the morning and i woke up and saw it walk across my backyard and I thought I was hallucinating because i was so tired”
In the Spring of 2022 there was a sighting in a residential neighborhood, except it wasn’t just a camera trap or security camera, it was a person… Then shortly after, another in person p-22 sighting…
News: “The lion lounging in someone’s driveway by some recycling bins”
Resident: “That’s definitely not a house cat…” and you’re definitely not sober. During this time more sightings just keep rolling in.
Resident: “He’s so handsome! Is he singe?” News: “Silverlake resident, Mariana Polka was starstruck seeing the feline just down her street”
Silver Lake is a residential neighborhood a bit South East of Griffith Park, outside of P-22’s normal range and this wasn’t the only neighborhood he was being seen…
News Reporter: “In the Hollywood Hills, is this big cat the famous feline known as P-22”
Resident: “I saw a lion in the way! So I knew I had to get cameras because no one would believe this story… it’s an insane story…”
In another encounter in the Hollywood Hills somebody arrives home to see P-22 sitting on their front porch, completely unafraid of humans…
News: “Mountain lion encounter that was a little bit too close for comfort…that lion was spotted on somebody’s front porch seemed pretty unfazed there. The homeowner was actually in his car when he noticed the big cat. The lion eventually left on his own allowing that homeowner to get inside a little bit safer”
There is a general sense of excitement and even joy for most of the LA residents that are getting to see this usually elusive animal but this is very out of the ordinary behavior for p-22…
The same individual that was going out of his way to not be seen by humans for over a decade, now all of the sudden seems like he’s no longer afraid of humans and is very casually moving through residential neighborhoods at night. These neighborhoods in Los Angeles are going to have very easy prey. Things like city Possums and raccoons... don’t spook very easily and are easy to corner, was P-22 changing his diet in addition to his territory? Either way this strange behavior continues for months…
FIRST ATTACK
In November things take a turn for the worse…
News: “A Silverlake man walking his dog suddenly finds his dog in the mouth of a mountain lion”
In the next clip you are going to briefly hear audio from a security camera. This audio is of a chihuahua in distress it’s short but if you’d rather not hear it all, just skip ahead 15 seconds right now…
Rene Yelling: “Oh! Hey HEY! H E Y !” News: “Rene Astorga thought it was a dog, it didn’t take long to figure out how wrong he was”
Rene: “That’s when I realized, oh no! this is not a dog…it’s a mountain lion. this is where the whole struggle happened”
The struggle happened a few blocks from Griffith Park on Ivan Hill Terrace… After yelling at P-22 Renee jumped into action to defend his little chihuahua mix.
Rene: “I was just kicking and punching and trying to just ya know do something and…he ultimately let go”
News reporter: “You were fighting a mountain lion!? That’s crazy!”
Rene: “Ya…that’s insane”
Rene’s quick actions were exactly what you should do if you or a loved one are being attacked by a mountain lion… FIGHT BACK… However you can with whatever you can and fortunately it worked. Rene got the dog to the vet in time to save his life…
News: “They never imagined a mountain lion would be a concern on their street but are now going to take some precautions going forward. They want to make sure their neighbors do as well”.
Rene: “When we come out at night we kinda make a little more noise as we’re stepping out and yeah I guess just be super vigilant”
This was the first time a human physical altercation with p-22 had been reported, P-22 saw the chihuahua mix, saw the human and then approached them anyways, unafraid. It was very out of character and very concerning that something is probably wrong with P-22.
SECOND ATTACK
Very shortly after the attack in Silverlake there was another, this time in the Hollywood Hills, literally right underneath the Hollywood sign, 5 miles west of the previous attack…
News Reporter: “This is about as close an encounter that we’ve ever seen with a mountain lion and should go out as a warning tonight to everybody who lives in oreven visits the Hollywood Hills”
A home security camera shows P-22 walking down the street at night and he suddenly stops and crouches into an attack posture very focused on what is ahead of him…
News Reporter: “At the very same time, this man, who wants to remain anonymous, was walking two small dogs near Creston and Durand Drives, 9 year old Piper a Blue Mearl and Chihuahua mix was on the leash”
The dog walker never heard p-22 approach from behind…
Dog Walker: “I felt a tug and I heard Piper squeal, I turned around and I just saw a face…I didn’t know what it was… it was like a two or three second struggle… He had Piper in his mouth… I saw he wanted him… He didn’t growl at all… I didn’t even hear him… I never had a chance…”
P-22 took off with the small dog… It’s very possible that during the first attempt that P-22 made at a dog on a leash, on Ivan Hill Terrace, During that attack maybe he learned from that experience and shortly after tried a different technique to successfully steal the chihuahua away from the dog walker under the Hollywood Sign… Either way, p-22 has now repeatedly shown that he’s no longer avoiding humans and is approaching dog walkers in pursuit of their pets.
Piper was the chihuahua that P-22 took off with. Piper’s owner, Daniel Jimenez was completely heartbroken but didn’t have any urge for retribution against p-22…
“I dont’ want anything bad to happen to P-22. I just want people to be safe out there so nothing like this happens again”
I personally know multiple people who have had their pets attacked by urban wildlife, mostly coyotes. I was housitting two chihuahuas during a drought in los angeles and a raccoon came through the doggy door and attacked one of the chihuahua one of the most surprising and savage things I’ve ever seen… fortunately that dog survived…but I also know a lot that did not… point being, small dogs are easy targets for predators other than mountain lions in the city of Los Angeles… and if you choose to have a small dog, it’s really important to always be on high alert, especially after dark.
CAPTURE
News Reporter: “The CA Fish and Wildlife along with the National Park Service want to capture P-22 and then give him a health exam”
After a decade of avoiding humans, in short span of time between November and early December 2022 there were at least 5 incidents of P-22 approaching people with pets… and in recent video footage of him, he looks thinner and might be limping… A plan is hatched to capture P-22 for a health evaluation.
News Reporter: “...to track down P-22 after he began exhibiting unusual behavior including two recent attacks on leashed dogs”
Jordan: “He’s been acting kind of not like a mountain lion lately, at least not one in the wild”
that’s Jordan Traverse with the CA dept of fish and wildlife...
“Typically mountain lions don’t want to interact with humans. They don’t want to interact with pets”
On the morning of Dec 12th, 2022 Wildlife officials followed P22’s radio collar to a backyard in the Los Feliz neighborhood, shot him with a tranquilizer dart and brought him in for evaluation.
News Reporter: “Famous mountain lion, P-22 is safe and in custody tonight, days after wildlife officials set out to capture the big cat”
News Reporter: “LA’s most famous mountain lion roughly 12 years old, life expectancy in the wild is around 10. Authorities now trying to figure out if his age, injury, or illness are to blame for his changing behavior”
Jordan Traverse: “Everything hinges on the health evaluation, If he cannot be re-released, which it kind of is looking like that might be a possibility, then we are considering a sanctuary situation or some kind of captivity situation…also if it’s the most humane thing to do, even though we do not love this idea, if he’s incredibly injured or incredibly sick, euthanasia is still on the table for this particular animal.”
This is happening in mid-December right before the holidays and I was spending time with family and for the most part taking it easy…. I was really nervously glued to any updates on P-22… I remember thinking there is no way they are going to release him back into Griffith Park after he approached multiple people… that would definitely be irresponsible. I think I was kind of accepting that P-22 was now no longer part of the wild landscape of Griffith Park and that was heartbreaking but was really hoping that they wouldn’t have to put him down… I wasn’t alone… the comment sections on any of these news stories online were loaded with concerned fans of P-22 sending love and hoping for the best…
News: “They say it’ll be days before the extensive health evaluation is done and P-22 future decided”
After a few more days, information started to trickle out… P-22 was hit by a car on multiple occasions, Some of P-22’s injuries were fresh probably occurring in the past month and some p22 had been dealing with for a long time… He had broken bones and lost the use of one of his eyes. On top of all of that he had 5 different rat poisons in his body, an extreme case of mange covering his entire body. ringworm, an incurable liver disease, and arthritis… poor guy was suffering on so many different levels… But he didn’t just lay down and die. Even after he was physically incapable of hunting deer… he adapted and found easier prey in the city itself. All Because p-22 is a Legend and doesn’t just give up, he finds away to keep going through whatever obstacles life throws at him.
Even though his reliance is inspiring, p-22 being injured actually made him more dangerous to humans, especially children and pets… I think that is very obvious from this story… we see his behavior completely change …if he was in a bigger territory that wasn’t artificially cut off from surrounding wilderness, chances are another male mountain lion probably would have chased him out of the area or even killed him. It’s brutal but that’s how it’s supposed to happen in the wild and the natural way actually works out better for humans and our pets because it cuts down on desperate predators. The same applies to grizzly bears and some other predators. For instance, it used to be common practice in the settler days of north america to kill any predator you see. The problem with this philosophy is that the predator you are killing is probably that established alpha and very proficient at hunting and killing deer… and if you kill him off it leaves that territory open for beta males whether young and inexperienced or old and compromised to move in and beta males are desperate and will go for what they perceive as an easier meal which could be humans, often children and pets. It’s been proven in multiple studies that this happens. Moral of the story is, a balanced and natural ecosystem is healthier for everyone including us. Even though the big alpha looks the scariest, don’t kill it because the alpha is actually the safest for us.
DECEMBER 18th, 2022
It was a very tense couple of days waiting to hear if he could be nursed back to health… then on Dec 18th, then the director of the CA Dept of Fish and Wildlife, Charlton Bonham, made the official announcement:
“P-22 had a number of severe injuries and chronic health problems. His prognosis was deemed poor. Based on all of these factors and a unanimous recommendation by the medical team at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, the department, uhm…” he pauses to hold back tears… “the department approved and this morning P-22 was compassionately euthanized. I want to pause there for a moment because I don’t want to rush any of you who have joined us and I’d like you just to reflect for a moment. I’m sure each of you has fallen in love with the animal like all of us have… This really hurts and I know that… it’s been an incredibly difficult several days…”
I’ve been working on this episode for over a year and everytime I get to this part of the story whether it’s researching or writing and now recording my narration…I get choked up. EVERY TIME! I have no doubt that they did everything they could for him. Nobody wanted to see P-22 suffer… and there just wasn’t any other option...
Official NPS statement: “The results confirmed that P-22 had been suffering from multiple severe injuries and chronic conditions that impaired his ability to function in the wild and would have lowered his quality of life if placed in human care.”
Robin: “the knowing he died, there was a little bit of loss of hope because he represented so much hope”
That’s Robin who I met at P-22 day and lived a half a mile from Griffith Park for the duration of P-22’s life.
Steve Winter who captured the iconic photo of p-22 with Hollywood sign in the background was interviewed shortly after P-22’s passing…
News Reporter: “Let me ask you, you’ve heard that unfortunately P-22 was just euthanized, what are your thoughts on that?”
Steve Winter: “Well my thoughts are that I spent a long time today crying because this cat means so much to me… I mean he became a celebrity in the land of celebrities…and his story is a miracle like something out of a Hollywood movie and i really think the most fitting tribute to P-22 is how we carry his story forward”
P-22 snuck into LA in the shadows completely unnoticed silently like a ghost. Nobody knew he arrived until later. But when he left… he didn’t leave silently he left with a BANG!!! He touched so many people’s lives changed lives and changed the way that we think about co-existence with the natural world. P-22 LEFT HIS MARK and it’s a big one.
GREEK THEATER
In Feb of 2023 A few months after his passing the Greek Theater in Griffith Park hosted a pretty massive celebration of life. Among the many performers were the 1960’s band the Tokens who performed their song “The lion sleeps tonight” which was very appropriate. Rainn Wilson who plays Dwight on the Office and is obsessed with bears… performed an original song inspired by p-22. Multiple celebrities and politicians spoke and paid tribute. It was a sold out event… 5,900 attendees! Probably the biggest memorial for any animal ever.
There was some talk about having P-22’s remains taxidermied and put on display in the Natural History Museum… but ultimately it was decided against.
On March 4th, 2023 a private ceremony in the Santa Monica Mountains was overseen by elders from four local tribes, and a few individuals from the NPS and national wildlife federation. During the ceremony a red tail hawk did a perfectly timed fly by and called out a few times as he did. P-22 was laid to rest in the general area where he was born… Beth Pratt with the National Wildlife Federation was there and said, “Knowing the beauty of where he’s laid to rest, it gives me some comfort”
October 2023 is the first P-22 Day after his passing. I was there. It’s a beautiful sunny southern CA day and kids are running around laughing while the adults meander around looking at the exhibits. This was my first time back to Griffith Park since P-22’s passing. It’s a very special place to me, I have spent endless hours hiking and exploring over the years. Getting lost on purpose and then just walking in one direction until i hit a street. It was the same beautiful and peaceful wild area but it felt a bit empty knowing that P-22 wasn’t here anymore. I always felt a wild sense of danger and adventure when P-22 was alive and even though I had never seen him myself, we shared that same park peacefully for a decade and it’s hard to put into words but there was something really awesome about that that was now gone…
COUGAR CONSERVANCY
Jeremy: “Korinna what are you doing at P-22 Day?”
Korinna: “Yeah, I’m here with the Cougar Conservancy, we have a big co-existence pavilion where we’re talking to people about mountain lions specifically, cougars if you want to call them that…We’re talking about home safety. We’re talking about trail safety and a lot of the different free services we offer the community at no cost”
That’s Korinna Domingo again who changed the trajectory of her career after learning about P-22, now runs the Cougar Conservancy which provides a wealth of information on how to safely coexist with these cats. There is a link to their website in the podcast show notes below that I would recommend checking out.
Korinna: “One of the the themes we are talking about here at P-22 Day and during Urban Wildlife Week, which we are in right now, is the need for connectivity, because back in the day we spliced up and preserved these areas in little islands. We didn’t know a lot about genetics then and how mountain lions and other animals need to move throughout the landscape. When you protect mountain lions you, you also protect vast amount of landscapes that they need to survive and thrive and so when we talk about mountain lions we can also look at them as a flagship species or umbrella species”
P-122
For over 100 years Griffith Park has been separated from any surrounding wild areas by miles and miles of city and probably hadn’t had a mountain lion for over a hundred years until P-22 wandered in… The experts all assumed P-22 was the one and only and there has been no evidence before or after P-22 that any others had made the journey to Griffith park… Until…
Vlad: “We were returning from dinner…” News Reporter: “Here in the Hollywood Hills, Vlad Polumiskov tells us how he met his new neighbor”
Vlad: “Parked my car, as I’m holding my son, I look to the left because the lights were still on they were very bright, I look to the left of me and I see a huge cat, a mountain lion”
May, 2024 a year and a half after P-22 passed, a resident spots a mountain lion in Griffith Park and gets cell phone video footage to prove it! A second un-collared male mountain lion had successfully made the journey across multiple freeways to get to the center of Los Angeles! There is a lot of excitement around this!
News Anchor: “And now a new star has perhaps been discovered!” Beth Pratt: “You can’t make this up right…it’s Hollywood! Somebody wrote something we didn’t expect…which is a second mountain lion, it looks like, has made it to Griffith Park!”
That’s a very happy Beth Pratt of the Wildlife Federation,
“If he is made part of their study he may be P-122.. I mean how fitting is that?”
There was a lot of optimism that we are now in a new era of a mountain lion once again, living in Los Angeles! but only two months later some pretty bad news came in…
News Reporter: “we want to get to some breaking news here… A mountain lion was struck and killed by a vehicle along the 405 freeway this was in the North bound lanes right near the Getty, this incident happened just after 2:30…”
The lion was heading West out of Los Angeles heading towards the Santa Monica Mountains… multiple mountain lions are killed a year southern California and many along the 405 freeway. Usually young males trying to find their own territory… but this one was going the opposite direction which was unique… and it was probably the same animal that was spotted in Griffith Park, but for whatever reason decided to leave… maybe it was the lack of potential mates or it just wasn’t a city cat… The mountain lion that was seen in Griffith Park and tentatively named P-122 was never seen again…
THE ANNENBERG WILDLIFE CROSSING
Over 50 mountain lions are killed on highways and roads in CA each year and the lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, where P-22 was born, are the most range restricted in the state, the second most in the world. The ocean and highways box them in making it likely for young males to be killed by the alpha male or accidentally breeding with their sister …creating a strong desire for young males to get out and find their own territory which then results in many of them being struck by vehicles and killed. This has been a problem for decades… but P-22’s journey and life brought a lot of attention to this problem, more than any PR firm could ever. During his life P-22 inspired the idea of creating a wildlife crossing from the Santa Monica Mountains, North, across the freeway to the Simi Hills. The National Wildlife Federation and Caltrans proposed the project in 2015 and they were for the most part laughed at because of the scale of the project… a wildlife overpass big enough to stretch across the 101 freeway, if you could even build it, would be the biggest wildlife overpass in the world with…. the biggest price tag… are you ready for this… $92 million dollars!
But… thanks to P-22’s inspiring story, The Annenberg Foundation and over 5,000 other organizations and individuals raised almost half of the cost on their own and managed to get the other chunk from the state of California aka taxpayers. 7 years after proposing the project, they broke ground and started building, this was while P-22 was still alive… and they are expected to complete the wildlife crossing next year in 2026, I’ve seen it, and it looks to me like it’s pretty close to being done… the entire structure is now in tact and stretches the entire width of the 101 freeway. Everyone agrees that there is no way it would be built without the legacy of P-22…
TAKEAWAYS
This is Miguel Ordenana again, who was the first person to see the photo trap evidence of P-22:
Jeremy: “Do you draw any kind of inspiration from P-22’s journey and life?”
Miguel: “I do... from a lot of different perspectives. As someone who grew up here and had trouble connecting with wildlife, he’s a symbol that wildlife are here and they’re resilient. And as a professional biologist who was always told ‘don’t waste your time studying animals in the city’, I took that personal, because I grew up in the city and I was inspired by animals like coyotes that would run through my neighborhood… and so to be able to, not only have this symbol of urban wildlife, but also co-existence that they are here and to take pride in those animals, is great. The last connection that I have is that he is an animal that crossed barriers to get here and went through a lot to survive and I’m a proud member of the Latino community. A lot of my family immigrated here, went through a lot of trouble to get here, often feel voiceless, especially if they don’t speak the language…and through all those reasons I feel very connected and proud to talk about his story. I’m someone who doesn’t like to talk about myself a lot but if it inspires another kid that looks like me and struggles to connect with nature in the city... than it’s worth it. Worth that discomfort”
My takeaway from all of this is learning about mountain lions for this story and the other mountain lion attack episode on this podcast I have really become obsessed with how remarkable of a species they are…. and P-22 as an individual is just the most remarkable of all the mountain lions. He accomplished the unthinkable, surviving multiple highway crossings, diseases, fires, multiple car strikes, and finding a way to survive in Los Angeles for over a decade! Even more amazingly, of the male mountain lions studied in the wild, P-22 is one of the longest living on record! He was truly one of a kind.
The Teeth podcast music is by Davey Chegwidden and Joshua Lopez this episode was produced by Scot Nery and myself, I’m Jeremy Carberry.
Thank you to everyone who talked to me about P-22, it’s been an epic journey and for me a very different format from what we usually do on the show. So the big question for you… is, was it worth it? Was this format something that you enjoyed? I have about 5 other famous individual wild animals, that I would love to do a full on life history of but also want to put out episodes that are good… so please let me know what you think via email at theTEETHpod@gmail.com or on our social medias which you can find: @TEETHPODCAST your feedback is really appreciated.
You can expect a new episode in one month but if you really want to hear new stories right now you can click the link in the show notes to become a supporter of the show for $5 a month and get access to all of the unreleased and supporter only episodes and you can cancel anytime. Thankyou so much to Alex in California, Keefus in France Sarah, Diana and Joe for becoming supporters, I can’t even tell you how much it means and how appreciated it makes me feel! Much love to you all.
I also want to recommend the the Strange Animals Podcast hosted by Katherine Shaw. They are short and information packed episodes focusing on …strange animals living, extinct and sometimes imaginary there is a link in the show notes below..
and finally please make a point to get outside today and take in the wide open outdoors… while simultaneously giving the wildlife the space and respect they deserve...
