Posted on 07/01/2012 1:50:27 PM PDT by Bratch
same in WV & western Va....the reason the Fish & Wildlife guys say they are there is because if they admit they were.....they would have to go out an assess the population. Something these state agencies have neither the money, personnel or time to do. So its easier to say they don’t exist.
Yep. 9-10 mos ago I heard a sound like a child yelling or something around midnight so I went out on the back deck to listen. My fiancee’ went to look out the front door window and he saw 2 juvenile black panthers waltzing down the the street right in front of our house. I guess they were calling out to Mom who was probably hunting down in the greenbelt behind our neighborhood.
25 years ago we lived in Western Washington State. Our land backed up to 1000 acres of State forest. I loved to wander the deer trails behind our house looking at the native flora in the woods and would take my 2 dogs and 2 cats along for the walk. I discovered a perpetually marshy place at the back of our land and went to inspect it. My dogs and my cats refused to come with me. The dogs stood there and barked, while the cats scampered up a tree.
My inspection of the marshy area revealed some huge pawprints. I showed them to my husband, and he said they were nothing to worry about — they were just from a dog who had sunken in the mud, making his paw prints look larger than normal.
Fast forward 5 years. We moved away, and our house in the woods was sold to the DNR for a ranger station. We went back to have a look to see what they had done with the property and found (to my dismay) signs posted in what was formerly my pasture mapping the trails on the land and warning hikers to “Beware of Panthers!”
Lesson: Listen to your cats and dogs!
They have been sighted literally for decades in Tioga and Bradford Counties, and for decades the DER has been quoting the usual party line: "There is no breeding population of mountain lions in Pennsylvania."
But DER now admits, "we appear to have some evidence of a breeding population in PA." Of course we do: they have been trying to establish one all along.
Don't worry, the ones that need pruning won't listen to an warning.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.