Thursday, March 22, 2007
Another sane person spots a mountain lion
Bill Cochran
Recent mail
BILL: A friend told me about the recent mountain lion article in The Roanoke Times (March 4) and when I Googled for it I also found the article you wrote last August saying your wife saw what may have been a mountain lion.
About five years ago, I saw a mountain lion, tail and all, about one-half mile from my home in Floyd County. I told a Department of Game and Inland Fisheries official about it and he laughed it off.
I know what I saw. It was at least 100 pounds, tan colored and with a tail that looked to be about 3-feet long. I surprised it as I rounded a turn on a dirt road. It was crouching and looking at something in the woods. When it heard the car and turned to look, it sprang in one leap over the 5-foot bank and into the woods without touching the bank. I stopped and wet to look for its tracks, which I found in the dirt and leaves. After looking at them a minute or so, I got back into the car and left.
About two years after that I found what I believe to be lion tracks in the snow at the edge of a field while I was deer hunting. I followed them about 100 yards until they led into thick brush. I didn’t want to go into that with a lion somewhere in there.
I see it as a public safety issue. When people are in these woods, especially children, they need to know about the predators that might eat them. I know what I saw, and so does your wife.
DAVID STEBER
DAVID: I remain a skeptic when it comes to mountain lions in Virginia, but last Sunday I did have one of the ministers at our church tell me he had seen one near his house, and, of course, my wife swears she saw one.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced recently that it is attempting to take some of the mystery out of the big cats by collecting information -- even anecdotal information -- in an effort to determine the status of the mountain lion (also called cougar and panther) in the East.
The Cougar Network recently unveiled a Web site at cougarnet.org. In the coming weeks, it is scheduled to include a mountain lion identification field guide.
BILL
