Mountain Lion on Our Deck

We have both mountain lions and bears here. We’ve seen bears occasionally but personally have not spotted a mountain lion.  We still haven’t seen one – but one left ample evidence of an early morning visit, per wit:

Sunday, 1:30am our dogs go absolutely Postal – going to tear the door off the hinges.  We get up, go out with flashlights and the dogs run around sniffing every inch of the front yard.  An hour later they go Postal again.

Something big was up on our deck.  We never saw it but it put scratches in the composite decking railing where it jumped/climbed up – left muddy paw prints down the railing until it jumped off onto a metal fire pit and crushed the screen lid all the way down.  It’s point of exit was over the 5′ tall fence around our front yard – it bent it way over.   Could have been a small bear – but the scratches were pretty fine and I don’t think a bear would tight rope walk down the railing.