Taxidermy trophy heads mounted on the interior walls of a California home attracted a hungry intruder, police say. A mountain lion jumped from a fence and broke through a glass window at a San Bruno home early Tuesday morning but was scared off by the homeowners, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Police in the San Francisco suburb say the animal, which has not been located, probably thought the large game heads, including an elk and a bison, were food. "While mountain lion sightings are fairly common throughout Northern California, this type of incident is out of the ordinary," police said in a press release, offering tips for residents to reduce the risk of encountering a mountain lion.
Rose, one of the homeowners, tells KTVU that she did a "quick U-turn to the bedroom" around 12:20am Tuesday after seeing the large mountain lion on the couch. "He went up in the living room and then, you know, he felt trapped, so he was running around, he knocked over a TV and couple of things," her husband Steve says. He says he was able to shoo the mountain lion, which was apparently unhurt, out through the same window it entered by. Wildlife officials say they have heard of a few similar incidents in which mountain lions broke into homes, usually after seeing their own reflection in glass. (More mountain lion stories.)