Two wardens and a federal tracker from the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent Sunday night sleeping near the South Bay trail, looking for a mountain lion that attacked a 6-year-old boy over the weekend, lunging at him front out of nowhere.
The crews spent Monday using hound dogs to help track down the cat and also set up traps in the area. And the search will continue on Tuesday, too.
All this to find the animal who leaped out at the boy on Sunday about 1 p.m. while he was out hiking with his family. The boy suffered his injuries to his head and neck, but was released from the hospital on Monday from Valley Medical Center in San Jose, according to hospital spokeswoman Joy Alexiou. A witness to the aftermath of the attack, but who asked not to be identified, sent NBC Bay Area a photo of the boy as medical crews assisted him in the hopes of educating people about the issue.
California Dept. of Fish and Game Lt. Pat Foy told NBC Bay Area that the agents are determined to find the mountain lion. They slept Sunday night in the dirt with their guns, looking to find the mountain lion and kill the animal if they found it. The cat has been determined by officials to be a male. His age is unknown.
"It's a matter of public safety," Foy said, explaining why wardens were out to kill the mountain lion. "Even after the attack, the tracker did find evidence to suggest that the lion actually followed the family back down to their car when they were trying to get the child to safety. That’s indicative of extreme, dangerous behavior."
Foy added that wardens also want to get a rabies sample from the lion's brain, since the animal had clawed and bit the boy. Mountain lions often come back to the attack site to hunt again, Foy said
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At this point, Foy said it appears as though there is only one mountain lion involved, but he did say there are "tracks all over the place," so he's not sure if there could be more.
The intensity to find the mountain lion is because the animal attacked the a boy while he was on a hiking trail off Montebello Road, called the Picchetti Ranch Zinfandel Trail near the Picchetti Winery. The boy was with a group of 10 - including his parents, and another family. Each set of parents had three children apiece with them -- all under the age of 7.
The 6-year-old had been walking about 10 feet ahead of the group, Foy said.
Then, out of nowhere, Foy said the mountain lion attacked the boy, biting him on the head and neck "as if he were a deer." The cat began dragging the boy into the brush.
The boy's father and his friend began yelling and screaming, and eventually the mountain lion dropped the boy. The father scooped up his son, Foy said, and family members carried the boy back down the trail to their cars, where they called for help.
Witnesses said the parents of the boy, who were also carrying a baby, used an extra diaper they had to cover the boy's wounds before emergency crews were able to treat him.
The boy's family, so far, has declined public comment.
Shawn Ardaiz, who was visiting from San Francisco, witnessed the boy being brought up the trail with what looked like "lacerations" on his neck.
"The man came down the trail carrying his son, it looked like he had lacerations on the back of his neck ... He was bleeding pretty heavily," he said. "Originally, I thought he had fallen off some rocks, but afterwards we heard a mountain lion attacked."
Mountain lion attacks causing death and serious injury are rare in California.
There have only been three deadly cases since 1986, when the Department of Fish and Game began documenting them. They occurred in El Dorado, San Diego and Orange counties.
There have been 11 nonfatal cases in California during that time period - none in the Bay Area. The last nonfatal attack statewide was reported in July 2012 in Nevada County, when a 63-year-old man was confronted by a mountain lion as he lay quietly in his sleeping bag.
Foy recalled that four of five years ago, sheriff's deputies encountered two mountain lions in San Mateo County, and they were prepared to kill the animals to protect the public's safety, but they never tracked them down again.
Clothing the boy wore during the attack was taken to the state's Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Sacramento where scientists will attempt to match the DNA to the exact mountain lion responsible.
NBC Bay Area's Nannette Miranda, Riya Bhattacharjee, Marianne Favro and Derek Shore contributed to this report.
