Janitor traps cougar in empty high school classroom

PESCADERO, Calif. — A custodian’s work is never done, especially for one at Pescadero High School in California.

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A detective for the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office said a cougar was walking through campus on Wednesday and decided to take a detour into an English classroom, The Associated Press reported.

An alert janitor quickly shut the door behind the wild cat.

The detective said the mountain lion was about 40 pounds and was “lost and scared.”

A 10th grader who grabbed a photo of the cat said it looked small. He said he’s seen mountain lions in the region but never at school.

“It was pretty small. It was a cub. It didn’t look that threatening to be honest. It was just a little cub,” Jay Alsadier told KPIX. “It seemed pretty scared. it seemed more scared of us than we were of it.”

It eventually calmed down and did what a typical housecat would, curling up on a rug on the floor with its head in the sunlight, KTVU reported.

Students were scheduled to take part in graduation rehearsal and finals but both were stopped while the cat was on campus. Students were taken by bus to another school to be dismissed.

The cat was in the classroom from 8:30 a.m. until around 5 p.m., when the California Department of Fish and Wildlife was called in and tranquilized the cat, taking it to the Oakland Zoo to be checked out.

The mountain lion was estimated to be between four and six months old and was underweight, KTVU reported.

The animal also had a broken tooth that will have to be removed, the AP reported. Eventually, zoo officials hope to release it back into the wild, KTVU reported.

The school’s superintendent said she thought it was a senior prank, since the cat was on campus the day before the last day of school, KNTV reported.

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