When a track intrusion alarm went off at a Vancouver SkyTrain station on Friday, TransLink employees probably weren’t expecting who they found on the tracks: a couple of adult cougars. The big cats had somehow wandered onto the line and were filmed walking down the centre of the tracks at around 4:15 a.m.
“It’s not clear how the cougars were able to access or leave the tracks,” TransLink spokesperson Chris Bryan told the Daily Hive. The cougars were caught by security cameras walking through Inlet Centre Station, a part of the Evergreen Line that runs through Port Moody, a suburb of Vancouver where the population is less dense than metro Vancouver. “If you look at Inlet Centre Station, there’s a lot of forest in that area—so it’s not surprising,” Bryan told the CBC.
While raccoons and coyotes have been spotted on the tracks before, this is the first time TransLink has seen cougars, Bryan said.
By the time SkyTrain employees did their morning check of the tracks, the cougars were gone. No giant felines have been spotted on Vancouver public transit since.
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