Comments on: Retro-Explaining: Dead Connecticut Cougar Said To Have Been In New York…As Well As Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota And South Dakota!

By: dawgdoc

dawgdoc — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:56:02 +0000

Not even wrong,

Wasn’t a panther killed in west Georgia in the last few years?

By: not even wrong

not even wrong — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 23:13:46 +0000

Living in West Ga, we have been told by local game wardens that there are absolutely no big cats and haven’t been for centuries. I have seen a black panther, no question what it was and I have quite a few friends who have seen them/ heard them (very distinct scream not a bobcat or feral cat, etc.) hunting. I think that a concerted crypto search for those instead of bigfoot in Georgia would yield some real results.

By: kittalia

kittalia — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:31:05 +0000

I don’t think they quite match up. In the first may picture, you can see lots of color variation between light and dark, and in the dead cougar picture I can’t see anything. Also, in the blurry picture, you can clearly see a dark streak going straight up the inside of one of the front paws, and on the dead one it is diagonal.

By: DWA

DWA — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:53:03 +0000

Hmmmm. Maybe we *are* seeing Cougar Denial: The Next Generation.

“No, ma’am. This one came all the way to Maine from northern British Columbia. There aren’t any others.”

Or maybe it’s the real deal. To paraphrase Roger Tory Peterson on vagrant birds: Animals have legs, and they do things.

A black bear was killed in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, in 1985. All indications were of a wild animal…and the nearest MD bear habitat at the time was about six hours’ drive away. (The nearest habitat in VA: farther.) That’s not ND to CN, but point made.

By: coelacanth1938

coelacanth1938 — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 05:28:07 +0000

We just don’t know as much about these cats as we think we do.

By: flame821

flame821 — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:32:52 +0000

I hope the people in the area raise a huge fuss over this. It is a safety concern for their children and pets. Sure the authorities will claim ‘escaped exotic’ as they always seem to do but this was a male cat, more than likely roaming and mating with other mountain lions.

I do find it a bit far reaching of the authorities to claim that this is ‘probably’ the same cat from the Mid-West. Sure, it is possible as most large predators will travel to where the resources are plentiful and competition is low, but that’s a LOT of miles for a single animal to travel in a year and a half.

By: Minnesotamonster

Minnesotamonster — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:52:33 +0000

After reading the news story linked by CryptoNY I am a bit confused. The DEEP rep. the reporter spoke to said they hadn’t investigated the reports due to lack of evidence? The dead Cougar on the side of the road seems to point to eyewitness reports being correct, doesn’t it? Now they are getting more eyewitness reports and still say not enough evidence. I always thought investigating is what “experts” in a given field did to gather evidence, not the general public that pays said “experts” salary.

By: Zabo

Zabo — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:10:04 +0000

i think it’s safe to say that this cat got around.

By: mandors

mandors — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:44:33 +0000

Why do I get the creepy feeling that this one dead cougar in Connecticut is now being used by U.S. wildlife officials to explain several recent confirmed puma sightings in the Midwest and East – sort of like how a confessed serial killer is used to “clear the books” on unsolved murder cases? Loren

Because that's what "experts" do when they're proven wrong. Next, they'll say it taught itself to walk up right and spend time in the Pacific Northwest. Before that it swam across Lake Champlain in the summer, after it presided over a bipartisan budget agreement.

By: CryptoNY

CryptoNY — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:36:02 +0000

I have been following this story with tredipation. There were numerous sightenings of a cat in Greenwich Ct. but according to the Ct. DEEP these sightenings were not credible. Not credible that is until someone took a photo of the cat in their backyard (OOPS). Must be an "escaped exotic". The cat above was killed some forty miles north of Greenwich on a Sat. night and was immediately linked to the Greenwich cat even though there were several sightenings once again in Greenwich on Sunday morning (its ghost).The DEEP once again publically claimed this was not credible. A local newspaper interviewed the family of four that observed the cat for minutes in their back yard and watched it scale an eight foot wall in one leap. This plus the fact that the cat that was killed had to swim across the Housatonic River or cross over the bridge (hope he had an EZ-Pass) if it traveled from Greenwich. There are still reports of a cougar in Greenwich as of recent.