Mountain lion P-22 looking healthy again

NPS

The male mountain lion who prowls Griffith Park looks fully recovered from the mange that sickened him earlier in the year, the National Park Service said today. New pictures grabbed last month — while P-22 fed on a deer kill over four nights — show the cougar with a full belly and a healthy looking coat. Biologists believed earlier this year that P-22 was ailing from ingestion of rat poison, probably delivered through the prey he eats up in the canyons and chaparral of the park and surrounding areas.

P-22, you probably know, made it to Griffith Park from the western Santa Monica Mountains after somehow crossing the 405 freeway and the 101 — and was famously photographed by Steve Winter for National Geographic. Now, a new photo tweeted by the son of singer Stephen Stills appears to show a second lion walking near the gated Beverly Park development above Holmby Hills. If so, that could mean that another lion has gotten across the 405 (or presumably the 101, headed the other way.) Or perhaps this lion is part of an untagged population that was already there? In case, here's hoping this cougar is a female and she's headed P-22's way.