The first time the mountain lion pawed its way through the Idaho campsite Friday, the cat went unnoticed by everyone except for one woman. Kera Butt was camping with her family in Green Canyon Hot Springs, near Yellowstone National Park, when she caught a glimpse of the animal.
“As we were eating dinner, I turned my head and saw the back part of the cat,” Butt told East Idaho News. “I saw it move and I told everyone, ‘I just saw a cat.’”
Her family was skeptical. It must have been a different species of animal — perhaps she had mistaken a wolf for the larger predator, they said. Although mountain lions are native to the Yellowstone area, the cats are almost mythical in their ability to go unseen. They are stealthy hunters and usually shy around humans. No more than a few dozen live in the 3,000-square-mile park at a time.
Butt’s eyes did not deceive her. She had indeed spotted a mountain lion, an event the Idaho Department of Fish and Game called “highly unusual.” Stranger still, the big cat would return later that night — in a brief moment that, to the Butt family, unfolded in horror.
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