Mountain lion caught in San Francisco. ‘We locked eyes,’ resident says

A mountain lion seen wandering the streets of San Francisco over the weekend was finally spotted and captured early Tuesday.

The roughly year-old male will be relocated, San Francisco Animal Care and Control said in a Facebook post.

Two animal control officers spotted the mountain lion as they patrolled the Pacific Heights area around 1:30 a.m., prompting an “hours-long standoff,” the agency said. They were joined by San Francisco police and staff from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the San Francisco Zoo, who helped to tranquilize the animal, officials said.

The lion had been seen traversing the city since at least Sunday and probably got lost while dispersing from its mother, the agency said.

“We locked eyes for over five minutes,” resident Roxanne Blank told ABC7. “I was actually really honored that the mountain lion didn’t eat me and we just had this nice long gaze into each other’s souls.”

After authorities cornered the mountain lion in a tight area between two apartment buildings, the operation to remove it became a spectacle, with neighbors watching from windows and balconies, the outlet reported.