Local Safari Fails To Find Lion King North Spokane Woman Claims She Saw Beast Near Her Home

Was it the King of the Jungle or the Shaggy Dog? No one knows for sure.

Animal control officers and Spokane sheriff’s deputies spent two hours Tuesday combing a northeast Spokane neighborhood in search of a real-life lion king.

They were called to the 4400 block of East Lincoln Road shortly after 10 a.m. when a woman said she had seen a lion wandering near her house.

“She said it was an African lion, not a mountain lion,” said Marianne Sinclair, director of the Spokane County Animal Control Authority. “She set us straight on that.”

The woman told deputies her dogs had started barking loudly outside about 8:30 a.m. When she looked outside, she spotted the king of the jungle “just walking around,” said animal control officer Sheri Kent.

Animal control officers got into the hunt after the woman called the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, which refused to respond.

Skeptical investigators wondered if the woman, the only person to report seeing the big cat, had mistaken it for a dog - perhaps a large chow.

“No. She’s sure it was not a dog,” one deputy replied firmly over the radio. “We asked her several times.”

Three deputies and two animal control officers talked with the witness, who pointed to a field behind her house and said she last had seen the lion walking up the hill.

Besides some deer tracks and some coveys of pheasants, Kent and a deputy she brought along (“for backup”) found nothing.

“I don’t carry big guns,” said Kent. “If we would have found something, I would have liked to have one.”

Walk in the Wild zoo is not missing any animals. Animal control officials have heard only of a lost llama this week, Kent said.

Mike Wyche, director of an exotic animal facility in north Spokane County called Cat Tales, said all of his felines also are accounted for. But he said he doesn’t doubt the woman actually saw a lion. There are many private owners of large cats in the county, he said.

“Sometimes, people let them go when they become unmanageable,” Wyche said. “It’s quite possible she really saw one.”