Cougar busts into Grant County man’s house through screen door

A cougar jumped through a man’s screen door in Ephrata on Tuesday and ended up unconscious in his sink, Ephrata police say.

The man was outside of his house as the cougar cruised through his neighborhood, said Becky Bennett, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife police spokesperson.

In Bennett’s five years in the role, she has never seen or heard of a cougar entering someone’s house. In this case, the big cat was not trying to attack anyone but wanted a place to hide, Bennett said.

“Generally an animal gets disoriented and it’s a matter of them getting lost and not knowing how to get away from the population,” Bennett said.

The homeowner called Ephrata police who secured the area and called Fish and Wildlife officers, Bennett said.

Ephrata police spokesperson Elizabeth Kallstrom said the cougar was in the man’s kitchen when Fish and Wildlife police arrived.

The first tranquilizing dart failed to knock the cougar out as it tried to go through the kitchen window. Police darted it a second time and it came to rest in the kitchen sink, Kallstrom said.

Bennett said she didn’t know the cougar’s size, but according to the department’s website, adult male cougars usually weigh about 140 pounds and are 7 to 8 feet long from nose to tail.

Bennett said Fish and Wildlife police transported the cougar to a shrubby grassland area in Douglas County where, “fingers crossed,” the cougar will not enter a home again. Police eartagged the cougar in case of a “repeat offense,” Bennett said.

“It was an adult male, healthy, nothing wrong with it,” Bennett said. “This was probably a wrong time, wrong place, wrong house situation.”