No, actually, it’s an OTTER in a cat suit, DWA. More “logical.”

This story has a personal resonance for me because when I was a young one I was part of a military family and we were stationed in Ft. Sill, Ok. Not really near Atoka but one still heard “tales” from folks who were connected to the hunting scene, you know?. Anyway, occassionally in High School I heard from people who hunted and they described to me tales about how “Panthers” were still around certain parts of OK. I always believed them—these were “reliable” folks—so it is not surprising that confirmation has now been found.

Also not surprising is the reaction of the “experts.” I personally think they’ve always known about these “populations” but denied their existence for whatever reasons they might have had. I guess they fear some sort of “controversy” if they were to admit the truth. Whatever the “controversy” would be, I can only guess at. Waste of time to deny it, I say. Sort of understandable, though.

But hey—this is the land where “the wind comes sweeping down the plain,” right. Sometimes I’m afraid it sweeps from one experts ear to out the other one. Sad, but true.

I guess that’s not too much of a surprise. Normal folks like us tend to just trust our eyes; Officials are very reluctant to act without evidence tantamount to proof, to them. (And VERY reluctant to admit Ground Truths that complicate their administrative lives.)

Which, mind you, is not to excuse the “experts.” They should more than know enough not to scoff before the evidence is in and evaluated. Scoffing makes normal people who saw something, and know they did, and know what it was, feel like idiots, something that as a normal person I sure wouldn’t appreciate.

Of course, it could just be a sasquatch in a cat suit. That sort of thing has happened before.

This is the official statement from ODWC. “We know we’ve got them, but we don’t know where they are at or how many,” said Alan Peoples, chief of the wildlife division for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. “It’s kind of hard to monitor something so secretive and so rare as a mountain lion.”

They may be admitting it now, but I was told that we did not have any Mountain Lions in Oklahoma, when one took my elk from me several years ago. Needless to say I let him have it.