I think at about the same time I saw mine, a number of reports were made from the area. Fish and Game insisted it couldn’t be a cougar, and said it was probably a bobcat. Ridiculous (and vaguely insulting), but for some reason they just don’t want to accept that cougars do come east every so often, and there may be active populations.
Forty years ago, my wife, her brother and her father saw a mountain lion in Central Arkansas where there are no mountain lions according to the Fish and Game commission.
It is believed there is a mountain lion just to the west of us in NW Arkansas as two people scouting for a place to deer hunt saw something long and lean slink off into the brush ahead of them.
The one that was killed in CT was a young male. He must have been looking for a new territory to call his own.
The same thing happened in Chicago a couple years back. It made the national news. This cougar had been seen around the northern suburbs for months. The authorities told everyone they were mistaken. It could not be mountain lion. Finally it came right into the north part of the city. The Chicago cops cornered it in an alley and shot it dead with their handguns about 25 times. Again they said it must have been an escaped pet. Turned out it was a wild cat.
Cougars don’t “officially” exist in Ohio, either - except for all the sightings that are written off as “escaped pets”.
One ran across the road in front of me in Indian Hill - in Cincinnati - in the late 1980’s.
Some friends in Blanchester, Ohio (30 miles from Cincinnati) regularly have a male and female mountain lion visit their rural property. The cops told them they were mistaken - until there were more reports. Then the cops told my friends to shoot it the next time they saw it, which they refused to do. The pair still shows up every couple of years.
A few years ago in Amelia, Ohio (outside of Cincinnati) some homeowners on a golf course saw a few deer racing frantically across the golf course - followed by a mountain lion. Wildlife officials found prints, but of course, wrote it off as yet another escaped “pet”.
Never could figure out why wildlife officials always think they are escaped pets. There is obviously a breeding population in southern Ohio.
Earlier this year there was a black bear wandering all over Cincinnati. Officials immediately said it was bear from Kentucky that swam across the Ohio. Some wondered if there were more than one bear as it was showing up in different places. The news followed it avidly - then suddenly stopped, despite more sightings, and never mentioned it again. It was kind of suspicious that all newspapers and local news stopped the same day.