Cougar on the prowl<\/p>\n
Jason Keis had an unexpected visitor to his Vernon home overnight.<\/p>\n
Security camera of his home in the 8900 block of Eastside Road captured a cougar wandering through the yard.<\/p>\n
The big cat was spotted at around 9:30 p.m. Thursday night.<\/p>\n
In an earlier interview with Castanet, Vernon-based animal expert Pete Wise said the Okanagan is cougar country and the cats are found throughout the region.<\/p>\n
Wise said cougars are wandering through the area year round in search of prey.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhereever you have lots of deer, you are going to have a cat,\u201d Wise said.<\/p>\n
According to the BC Conservation Service, cougar attacks on humans are extremely rare, but Wise said people still should be cautious.<\/p>\n
“When people are outdoors they want to pay attention to what is going on around them,” he said.<\/p>\n
Wise, who spends most of days in the backcountry, carries a big stick and bear spray with him.<\/p>\n
If a person encounters a cougar Wise said to make a lot of noise.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to yell at them, you want to throw things at them,\u201d Wise said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to be highly aggressive toward them. They are different than a bear, absolutely do not play dead \u2013 a cougar will eat you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wise said to back away from the big cat, to look as big as possible and to not run.<\/p>\n
Running will trigger a prey response from the cat, and it will give chase.<\/p>\n
Wildlife encounters can be reported to the RAPP line at 1-877-952-7277.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cougar on the prowl Jason Keis had an unexpected visitor to his Vernon home overnight. Security camera of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-430639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}