Beloved? Absolutely, for a fellow with really long claws.
Unless you were a chihuahua, you revered the biggest cat in Hollywood, a town full of strutters who finally met their match in the feline who became urban Southern California’s wild mascot.
Why did we love P-22 so?
Because he was the truest Angeleno: curious, resourceful, incredibly handsome, ever willing to make the long commute no matter how far through crosstown traffic to explore in full the diversity and the depths of city life.
And he was a lion, for crying out loud, a puma, the 22nd so dubbed by the wildlife handlers, the toilers in the best government bureaucracy in the Southland, whose only task is to make life better for the creatures who have been here for eons before us.
The mass mourning after the death last Saturday of this awe-inspiring mountain lion who lived most of his 12-year life within the city of Los Angeles is entirely appropriate. He gave us joy simply by existing among us. His youthful navigation from the Santa Monica Mountains to Griffith Park in search of territory of his own was an inspiration to us all; the knowledge that he lived without a mate, as no other mountain lions successfully made the crossing, was always bittersweet.
Wildlife advocate Beth Pratt told NPR Wednesday that P-22’s was “a remarkable story. Nobody would predict that a mountain lion would march 50 miles across two of the busiest freeways … to make a home under the Hollywood sign. … His legacy is solid. That cat, through inspiring us, showed us what was possible. … He made us more human. He made us realize even in the second-biggest city we needed a connection to wildness..”
In the end, unable to hunt Griffith Park’s abundant deer as well as he used to, P-22 was wandering through Los Feliz and into Silver Lake so far that pretty soon he would have been reduced to waiting in line for avocado toast at Sqirl with the rest of L.A. RIP, big guy. You did us proud. You awakened us to our environment, living among other magnificent sentient beings. And we responded. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing on the 101 in Agoura Hills, which will make life much easier for future big cats, should indeed be called by us all in memory of the lion who lives in our hearts forever: The P-22.
I am given to understand — though I don’t actually understand it — that there are those who aren’t at all happy to share the big city with, well, a potentially man-eating beast.
Perhaps they should absent themselves to some other big city — Chicago or New York, maybe, where coyotes are probably the wildest things to roam their (awfully flat and landscaped) municipal parks.
But Griffith is a park that refuses to be tamed, like its lion, or flattened. While it contains manicured golf courses, a merry-go-round, a railroad, the famed observatory, the Autry, the — trapped — animals of the zoo, it also contained an alpha predator who lived as he pleased, as his ancestors had for tens of thousands of years in the rugged hills that are nominally within a city’s “limits.” Knowing that P-22 was roaming there made us unlimited.
And that limitlessness just above L.A.’s bright lights became our gift to the world when photographer Steve Winter’s hidden camera caught P-22 prowling just below the Hollywood sign and landed him on the cover of National Geographic. Like others who came to Hollywood, he became a rock star. Sure, as with other Jaggers, it was partially his good looks. But no rocker ever roared like P-22. It’s a lesser Christmas without him. Still, other big cats, there’s an opening for you now. Come join our merry band.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
