That said, it doesn’t mean that the observers didn’t actually believe they had seen a black panther. Or that they wouldn’t pass a polygraph or swear on a Bible as to what they “saw.”

But there has never been a proven “black” couger in all of American history. So it most likely was something else which still makes the sighting somewhat of a mystery. Just not a melonistic American couger.

If you are on interstate 580 in the Dublin Grade region and headed towards Pleasanton that means you are headed east on 580 as you are going downhill into the Pleasanton/Dublin valley. Traffic gets quite nasty in that area during the evening commute but when it’s not a stop and go commute crawl the traffic blasts through their at 65-70 miles per hour. So what did they do to watch this animal for 10 minutes? Pull off the road onto the shoulder? There’s an old road that parallels 580 through the hills, but there’s few places to pull over on the old road without causing a traffic backup.

Was the animal on the north or south side of the road? That effects the plausibility of the story.

800 yards is quite a distance to see. There’s no lack of recesses and cutbacks into the hills along the side of the road. As a child, when my family drove through the area in question, my sister and I would especially watch the recesses and cutbacks to count how many dear we could spot. Looking back and up the hills into a deep recess could possibly account for 800 yards of distance but still, 10 minutes?

I’m just not buying it.