Last Sunday, as Tom and Marilyn Wendorff headed home to Oxford Greens – a huge, cat-like animal crossed in front of their car.
Tom Wendorff said it happened so fast that he didn’t have time to grab his cell phone and take a picture of the animal. But the sight of it stuck in his mind.
It was huge, tawny in color, with black ears and a long tail. At first he thought it was a bobcat, but when he started researching it on the Internet he discovered that the animal he and his wife saw, fit the description of a mountain lion, also known as a panther, cougar or puma.
Wendorff said they were driving down Riggs Street around 6 p.m. Sept. 6 when the animal raced across the road in front of them. He sent out an e-mail to other residents of Oxford Greens, which is a golf course and over 55 community – warning them to watch out for their pets – as 160-pound mountain lions like a diet of deer, domestic pets and livestock.
“I know what I saw and it wasn’t a bobcat,’’ Wendorff said.
First Selectwoman Maryann Drayton-Rogers said she too has seen the cat and recently saw it on her way to the new Woodruff Hill Road industrial subdivision – which is not too far from Oxford Greens.
“I have seen one myself, so I can verify there is one (mountain lion) in town,’’ Drayton-Rogers said. “I don’t know where it’s den is though, it could be in a neighboring town,’’ she said.
Fire Chief Scott Pelletier said some people in town have also told him they have seen a cat-like animal off Quaker Farms Road, which is on the other side of town.
“It could have been a bobcat, but people told me it had a long tail and bobcats have short stubby tails,’’ he said.
Officials from the DEP say that there haven’t been wild mountain lions in the state since the 1880s and that no one has come up with actual proof they have seen one.
Paul Rego, biologist with the DEP’s wildlife division said “intelligent people come forth and tell us they have seen a mountain lion, but when we go out and investigate we do not find any evidence to support it,’’ he said.
Rego said people probably saw a bobcat or a coyote, but said it is a remote possibility that someone “let go,’’ a mountain lion that was bred in captivity and released into the wild.
He said the DEP receives mountain lion sightings on a regular basis and have received sightings for decades, but none have been confirmed. He said people have mistaken bobcats, coyotes and even everyday house cats as mountain lions.
He said there is no compelling evidence showing there are mountain lions in the state because mountain lions are prone to getting hit by cars and not one has been killed in Connecticut.
He also said that mountain lions remain active in the winter, yet no mountain lion tracks have been found in the state and no photographs have been produced showing a mountain lion.
Sandy Paolicelli, volunteer assistant animal control officer in Oxford said she’s heard “rumors’’ that people have seen mountain lions in town, but she’s never seen one.
But she warns people not to leave out their cats and dogs – because there are bobcats and coyotes out there that can harm your pets.
It is possible to have a mountain lion in the area, although not likely. Animals are very commonly misidentified. Someone once showed me a picture of a coyote with mange that looked surprisingly like a mountain lion in the picture. The mange had removed the coyote’s hair from the tail and body, but not face, so it seemed to have a long ropey tail and short body hair, with an almost cat-like face at the right angle.
One thing to bear in mind when trying to identify a wildcat is that a mountain lion is about 9 feet long including the tail – MUCH larger than a coyote or bobcat. And the tail is long enough that it could drag on the ground if the animal wasn’t picking it up. There are also other types of exotic wildcats that have been released by pet owners including wildcats from other parts of the world that might be misidentified as a mountain lion.
My two sons, ages 11 and 13 at the time, and I watched a mountain lion watch us, in our back yard in Beacon Falls, in early 2001. It was tall, long and lanky; it sat beneath a bird feeder, about 50 yards from the house, gazing in our direction. Fortunately, we, including our dog, were all indoors at the time. Its face transfixed me, and I was drawn to move outside and approach it; only my repeated mantra “you are a mother, be a good example,” kept me from doing so. When the animal stood, its long, long tail unfurled, and all 3 of us gasped.
DEP’s official line was that there are no mountain lions in CT. But as we told our story around town and in Oxford, we began to hear of other sitings through the years; old-timers will tell you “of course there are mountain lions here.” A DEP employee of my acquaintance also admitted, off the record, to seeing one at age 14 while hiking with Dad; it was stretched out on a low branch. We did research and learned that the roaming range of a puma is around 150 miles; they are known to live in the Catskills, so why wouldn’t they travel here?