BOULDER CREEK, CA (KRON/CNN) - Residents know that living close to the Santa Cruz Mountains means they share the land with wildlife, but two fully grown mountain lions prowling around your yard is surprising for anyone.
"They were magnificent. It was like nothing that I had never before. I had never seen one that close," Priscilla Unti said.
Unti and Ben Slaughter were awakened about 2 a.m. Monday by a noise they thought might be a prowler just outside their bedroom window.
"So we pulled the curtains back, and Ben's jaw dropped and he was like, 'No way!' And there were two giant mountain just right here," she said.
Slaughter, a firefighter, then grabbed his cell phone and started shooting video of the two fully grown mountain lions, who made themselves at home on the patio for the next 20 minutes.
"The light was on, and we think that they saw us. And they were just out here for 20 minutes or so just kind of poking around doing their thing, growling at each other, kind of clawing at each other, you could see in the video," Unti said.
Unti says she is diligent about bringing in pet food at night but suspects the mountain lions may have been attracted somehow by her dog Chloe or by her neighbor's pets.
She marveled, though, at how the playful the big animals were, suggesting that perhaps they are a couple.
"Just because of the way that they were interacting, the way that they were growling and hissing at each other," Unti said. "The body language makes me think that maybe they were male and female maybe trying to mate. I don't know."
The mountain lions were not intimidated by the people staring at them from behind the glass or by Chloe's growling and whimpering.
Unti said the two big cats eventually tired of the spotlight and wandered off into the redwoods.
"I was really nervous, and my heart was pounding but I am really happy that we got to experience that, to see that," she said.
Unti said she has seen mountain lions in the wild before but just one mountain lion, never two and never like this.
Copyright 2018 KRON via CNN. All rights reserved.
