Elk, weighing as much as five times as the big cat, require a different technique. After leaping on the elk's back, the leon grasps the elk's head with its big paws, twists the elk's head around and breaks the elk's neck. Biologists estimate that an adult mountain lion needs a deer a week to survive. Leones are solitary animals. They avoid other mountain lions, except for brief mating liaisons.
Females can come into heat at any time of the year, but spring is most common.
The males sleep around, staying with a given female only for the duration of her estrus. About three months after conception, female mountain lions give birth to two or three kittens. The young leones are weaned by six weeks of age, but stay with their mother for 18 months to two years, until they are sexually mature. Perhaps the mountain lion that wandered down to town was a young one, looking for a territory of its own. No matter its errand, the leon's appearance reminded us that we live in wild country.