Lion On The Lam In West Spokane Hunters Have Little More Than A Growl To Go On

The Great Spokane Lion Hunt raged on Thursday night as searchers with dart guns and shotguns scoured a usually quiet suburb overlooking the city.

Neither sirens nor shotgun blasts nor car horns - not even rocks hurled into tall weeds by chuckling sheriff’s deputies - produced the elusive African lion authorities suspect is prowling west Spokane.

Troopers blocked streets near Sixth Avenue and Rimrock Road by Indian Canyon Park, where, just around supper time, four people reported a strange noise in the brush - a cross between a growl and a purr.

One deputy perched on a rooftop and another on a porch while a pickup carrying armed animal-control officers plowed through windshield-high weeds.

“It was like a really deep, soft purrrrr,” said Rachel Brown, 13, who watched the hunt from Sixth Avenue.

She said she heard the noise in neighbor Lynn Stannard’s back yard. Stannard, 30, also summoned police late Wednesday, convinced she, too, had heard a growling lion.

“You could only hear it when you didn’t move at all,” said Brown, laughing nervously.

The search ended before dark with one deputy’s last-ditch effort to attract the big cat.

“Here kitty, kitty!” he said into a bullhorn.

Spokane County Animal Control Director Nancy Sattin threw her arms in the air. “I don’t think it’s out there. We made more noise than a herd of elephants,” she said.

Roger Harder, whose roof served as a deputy’s lookout, doubted the lion was there at all. His hunting dog, an English setter named Tanner, ran in the field all day.

“She’s as good as they come,” said Harder, a veterinarian. “She would’ve picked up the scent.”

It was a frustrating end to a frustrating day for Sattin, the top lion searcher.

She spent the afternoon at a small farm nearby, where a newborn lamb was found slaughtered in a pasture.

Something with “major jaw power” attacked the lamb Thursday morning just six blocks from the only place anyone reported actually seeing a lion. A woman driving to work on Canyon Drive early Wednesday said it was huge - at least 500 pounds - and scruffy.

Nola Graham first feared for her bottle-fed lamb at 1:30 a.m. Thursday, when the scores of animals she raises on her Houston Road farm sent out a chilling chorus.

“My peacocks, dogs, alpacas, llamas, sheep, geese - all were screaming and yelling. Then suddenly, silence.”

So, is it a lion? Or lion-mania? Sattin, after two days of lion hunting, isn’t sure.

She’s tired, frustrated and having trouble finding a spare bear trap. And sometimes, she fears her safari is turning into a wild-goose chase.

Take the frightened lady who saw animal tracks in wet cement at her South Hill home Thursday. They looked big enough. And trash cans along the street were on their sides!

Her assessment? “I almost called the school and had my son not go home.”

Sattin’s assessment? “It’s the biggest joke I’ve seen so far,” she said, after trekking to the woman’s yard. A medium-sized Lab? Maybe. A lion? Never.

Another caller said a neighbor’s chow became a lion look-alike each spring, when its hair was clipped to form a mane.

Ever cautious, Sattin drove out for a look. She found an unshaven chow instead.

Then there was the guy who reported seeing a huge animal with a long tail at 17th and Ray late Wednesday.

Sattin sighed. “It was a big dog. I don’t expect this lion to be roaming the South Hill. Unless it was on the way to that lady’s house to make prints in the concrete.”

Sattin doesn’t think witnesses are lying. She’s confident a roaming lion - probably a hungry one - was spotted at least once.

She’s just hoping to make a catch. Or at least have another legitimate sighting.

“I almost want somebody to see it or hear it,” she said, “so I’d know where to put the traps.”

That is, if she can wrangle a bear trap from game department workers. Theirs is tied up in a grizzly bear pursuit at the north end of the county.

Animal control officers couldn’t determine whether Nola Graham’s lamb was killed by a lion.

It’s possible, Sattin said. The wire fence surrounding it was just 5 feet tall.

Meanwhile, Graham is keeping her animals close to her small farm near Government Way. She and five hired hands herded dozens of alpacas from a field into a horse trailer, then moved them to nearby pens.

The feisty animals appeared to fear the trailer more than the mystery lion.

“Come on, Jack! Whiskey! C’mon Basco! Snowball!” Graham shouted, waving her arms. “Up in there, up in there. OK, OK, OK!”

“I’ve got llama spit all over me,” grumbled one of her helpers.

At Great Northern Elementary, kids who were forced to spend recess inside Wednesday trampled across the playground Thursday.

Still, superintendent Glenn Frizzell warned children to stay away from the woods and be careful walking to school alone.

Don’t run if you spot the lion, he reminded them, and don’t scream. Just slowly back away.

On Sixth Avenue, Stannard was exasperated as the searchers packed up at sundown.

“This is awful,” she said. “I heard it! I got witnesses to come with me, because I wanted people to believe me.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color); Map of search area

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Jeanette White Staff writer Staff writer Gita Sitaramiah contributed to this report.