An experienced hiker, Courtney Rasura, recorded a tense encounter with a mountain lion while walking alone on Gridley Trail in Los Padres National Forest near Ojai, California, on 3 July at about 6:30 p.m. The video, later posted online, shows the cat advancing toward her as she stands her ground, shouts "No! Go away!" and maintains eye contact until the animal retreats into the brush and disappears up a hillside. Rasura said she relied on safety guidelines she had learned for such situations—remaining calm, facing the animal, making loud noises and avoiding sudden movements. Those steps align with recommendations from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which also advises hikers to travel in groups, avoid dawn-or-dusk outings and never crouch or run when confronted by a mountain lion. Encounters with the big cats remain rare. State wildlife officials have documented a dozen mountain-lion attacks on people in California over the past decade, one of them fatal. Biologists estimate the state’s mountain-lion population at 4,000 to 6,000, and the Mountain Lion Foundation puts the lifetime odds of a person being killed by the species in the United States at roughly one in a billion.