Until recently, it was thought that the last mountain lion (a very big cat -- aka a catamount) disappeared from our state decades ago. However, reports have started surfacing again in recent years, and we have now spoken with no fewer than SIX reliable people who have SEEN one (maybe the same one, for all we know, but I doubt it) around the Rutland area -- primarily in Mendon or Chittenden -- in the last year.

There is no mistaking this animal for anything else. We've all seen bobcats and lynx, and the mountain lion is MUCH bigger! Two saw it run across the road in the dawn hours, in front of their car (a very startling sight I'm sure!), and the others have seen it (or one of them) either loping along in the woods or, in one case, just sitting there, like a very big dog, but it was NOT a dog, as soon as they got to see its distinctive long tail.

Just mentioning this in case, along with our moose and deer, some of you see a VERY large cat, too!

Running into a mountain lion can be a scary experience. We have a lot of them here in N CA. They especially come down from the mountains when there is a big water shortgage. Our county announced that they do not think they will be able to retain our county trapper due to our serious budget crisis.

We use to get them behind our fence where I use to live RetiredVermonter. Scary! My husband would find their droppings as well as the droppings from deer. He said the deer came out of the countryside looking for water and the mountain lions were looking for water but also staking the deers. We lived in the middle of a very large residential development which had lots and lots of natural open space.
At our local oil refinery the company had to hire armed security guards one year to protect the employees as they walked through the refinery as the mountain lions started invading the oil refinery.

Glad to hear that they're not gone. But I still wouldn;t want to run into one.

It seems a lot of wildlife is coming back - we had several pods (?) of dolphins in Long Island Sound - apparently chasing herring.

My favorite mountain lion story while living in California years ago was the turkey hunter who crouched down in front of a rock then used his call several times. Evidently it was authentic because a mountain lion pounced on him.

I have no doubt but that cougars have been spotted all over the East Coast. That, however, does NOT mean a breeding colony of these animals has returned there. It could simply mean someone who had an illegal pet or captive animal released the cougar into the wild. Or that a stray has gotten EXTREMELY lost.

There have been wild moose spotted in Iowa on more than one occasion, and in all cases it was simply one from Minnesota that was either (1) brain-diseased or (2) REALLY desperate for a mate outside a harem. Both conditions can cause a moose to travel hundreds of kilometers from its actual living area. But just because moose are spotted in Iowa does NOT mean they now live there.

And it's the same way with cougars. You may well have seen them (90% of all "spottings" turn out to be mistaken identities), but such a view is completely meaningless. An active breeding colony must be no less than about twenty, and even that small a number was not able to evade repeated evidence of their presence when living in Florida. As soon as this lone cougar dies or is killed, we'll be back to where we've been for over a century -- wild cougars still not back to the eastern U.S. north of the Everglades.

I hope they make it in my lifetime. But I conclude they haven't yet. For more info on this topic, check out a group that would be estatic about such an event, but still doesn't think it has happened

www.easterncougar.org/index.htm

I read John Harrigan's weekly wildlife column in the Sunday Manchester Union Leader (NH). Here's a link to one of his columns. You might enjoy reading the comments
http://www.unionleader.com/pda-artic...respectful+way

maybe tiny url will work better
http://tinyurl.com/n75tsh

surely it's not one cougar/mountain lion/wolf traveling the whole state. BTW a friend said a mountain lion ran in front of her car one night as she was returning home. She lives adjacent to flood control property which is hundreds of acres of wild area that few people visit. There are plenty of places for a family of animals to live and prosper without being seen.

> There are plenty of places for a family of animals
> to live and prosper without being seen.

True, but COMPLETELY meaningless. You don't confirm the presence of cougars by seeing one, you confirm one by the multitude of evidence they leave. If you check my link, to a group of people HOPING and WORKING for the return of these animals to the east, you'll read the following:
"Where cougars are well established, any knowledgeable individual can find evidence in a few days. Yet, our own field searches, sometimes within hours or a day of a sighting, have failed to produce evidence, and years pass between confirmations."
"Even in Midwestern states with low or emerging cougar populations, incidental evidence appears with reliable frequency."

In other words, evidence for wild cougars is easy to find in areas where they actually are, even when there are fewer than two dozen in an area the size of the Everglades. Evidence for wild cougars in the East, north of Florida, is non-existent, even though it should be easy to find -- IF they actually were there.

I heard what sounded like a loud mountain lion roar, 2 nights in a row, camping in Bennington, Vt, upper pasture of Senator Sanford's farm bordering the mountain forest. Too loud, too close and too deep a voice to be a shy bobcat...2 nights with a big fire blazing. Also the hotel keeper at top of Mt. Equinox, Manchester, Vt told me he has seen them in the high mountain road there.

Harrigan's column mentioned above continues to talk about this. NH Fish & Game deny all reports but recently someone got a photo of one killed on the hwy before State Police told them to move on and "there's nothing here to see" as the carcass was being loaded into a Fish and Game truck.

However, there are lots of strange loud noises in the night. It might have been some other critter you wouldn't expect to make such a noise.

Just adding my two cents to the discussion. I was driving yesterday (July 31st '13) around midnight on northbound I-89 about half way between Wight River Junction and Montpelier when a beautiful cat creature a size of a greyhound jumped from the midroad bushes and sped in front of my car across the road. Its acceleration was amazing. If moved like a leopard but without spotty leopard skin. Now I know what it was - a mountain lion. I am so happy that I did not hit it - there was absolutely no time to react. Just like cats do - it waited to the last moment and then ran across in front of me.