I live IN the Santa Monica Mountains, across the street from Federal Land and contiguous State Parks. I've been lucky to have seen one "cougar" while walking my dog, just for one second. It is exhilarating and terrifying. Beautiful animals.Something is usually amiss when a cougar is a hangabout near homes. We have about 14 or so cougar attacks per year in Canada and most all of them are hungry juveniles or the aged. Be careful.
But, somehow, (probably) one cougar has decided to stick around the houses for the last few days. They usually move on. Meantime, neighbors worry. Or maybe they have always done so and now we have too many Ring cameras capturing them.
If you see deer while hiking, you have to assume cougars are tracking them, so unlike the East Coast, seeing deer is a nervous omen around here.
Poor P-22 in the Hollywood Hills became too old and infirm. Around here the situation is bad but no so dire (yet). They are building a wild animals special bridge across the highway to let them have more contiguous land. I hope they learn to read the signs (humor). When nI lived in NJ, there was one on R78 in Watchung that was very cool.