Police Want Residents To Be Conscious Of Wild Neighbors

“There’s animals. We live right in their backyard. Having animals here is kind of cool. It’s neat for us,” said Glendora resident Jim Griffin.

The foothills of Glendora are replete with beautiful homes and landscapes, but some potentially dangerous, four-legged residents are a reminder that these mountains are their home too.

Jim Griffin, who lives near Easley Canyon and Palm Drive, recently set up a camera in his lush yard to capture a stealthy visitor who started digging up his yard four weeks ago and caught another creature: a bobcat.

“Something was rooting around in different places in the yard, so I got out a little night camera and stuck it out by the tree over here to see if we could figure it out,” Griffin said. “A couple of days later this cut little fox went by.

“About a week later, this big cat went strolling through. A week after that it came back. So last night I repositioned the camera so I could see the north end of the property to see where it’s coming in because we’re walled in on all sides,” Griffin said. “At 5:12 this morning the cat came wandering back through, circled back through and came down the walkway.”

The bobcat is a little smaller than Griffin’s dog, Riley.

The footage he captured encouraged Glendora Police to recently issue a friendly reminder to residents on Facebook about the potential dangers some creatures can present.

On February 25, a sickly coyote killed a neighborhood cat far south on Kirkwall Road and was eventually put down.

On May 1 of 2014, a teenaged bear went for a walk around foothill homes before being scared away on Valiant Street.

But one of the more famous cases came in October of 2012, when a bear caused a media circus on Sierra Madre Avenue after being spotted in a resident’s backyard before lumbering away on its own.

For Jim Griffin, the camera’s will stay until he figures out exactly how this four-legged visitor is making its way into his yard. While remaining vigilant though, he welcomes his furry guests.

“We don’t want to cause problems,” Griffin said.