Cougar: "Ghost of the Maine woods"

The Bangor Daily News has published an excellent and extensive article about cougar sightings in Maine.

Despite hundreds of sightings, cougar’s status remains in doubt
12/3/10 04:50 pm Updated: 12/5/10 06:57 am
By Kevin Miller, BDN Staff

Roddy Glover said he will never forget the day a decade ago he came face to face with the fabled ghost of the Maine woods, a predator that according to virtually all scientific accounts no longer existed in New England.

It was mid-September 2000 and Glover, then 39, was scouting out some easily accessible spots along railroad tracks in Monmouth where, with an injured foot, he could more easily bowhunt for deer.

Standing on an embankment above the tracks, Glover saw a large, tawny-colored animal strolling toward him in the mud beside the railroad ties, he said.

“I thought, ‘That looks weird. It doesn’t look familiar,’” Glover, a lifelong hunter as well as a taxidermist, recalled recently. “It was friggin’ huge.”

But when the animal turned sideways, revealing its characteristically long tail, Glover said he realized with a shock what was headed his way: a mother mountain lion with its good-sized offspring in tow.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said. “I just laid down … because I couldn’t run because of my foot. They started coming closer and closer, and they got within 50 yards of me when they turned and went into the woods.”

A biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife later would say in media reports that the tracks he documented at the scene were “the most solid piece of cougar evidence we’ve ever had.”

In the decade since, DIF&W has received scores of reports — and even some grainy photos — from people throughout Maine convinced they spotted a mountain lion crossing a road, stalking prey in a field or lounging in the sunny backyard like a gigantic house cat.

Reports of mountain lions — including one sighting near Greenville last month — have come in from all around the state in recent years. But officially at least, self-sustaining populations of wild cougars or mountain lions exist only in Maine’s history books.

[...]

Read full Bangor Daily News article here (this excerpt is only the tip of the iceberg!):
http://tinyurl.com/2b2zfah

Horse Dies after Mystery Attack

Thanks to Amos Quito over at New England Anomaly for picking this up. A sad story, and another question mark on the board of possible mountain lion encounters in northern New England of late.

Officials Say Mountain Lion Unlikely In Horse Attack
Family's Show Horse Fatally Wounded

WHITEFIELD, N.H. -- A Whitefield family said Monday that their beloved show horse was attacked and killed by a mountain lion, but experts said that's not possible.

Shirly Smith said that something attacked her 15-year-old palomino, Miss Dixie, nine days ago.

"She was just whinnying, and then we saw blood everywhere," Smith said.

The Smiths moved their other horses inside after they found Miss Dixie with scratches and gouges in her flesh.

"We got cold towels to put on the worst wounds on her chest to stop the bleeding," Smith said.

Despite emergency surgery, the horse didn't survive.
...
"Just judging from the width on the flank, it could possibly be a bear," Fish and Game Officer Matt Holmes said. "Considering what animals inhabit the area, that was the only thing I could come up with."

The Smiths said they believe a mountain lion could be responsible, but experts said that's unlikely. The Fish and Game Department gets about 100 reports of mountain lion sightings every year, but they said it has been 100 years or more since mountain lions roamed the Granite State.

Wildlife expert Rob Calvert said that he believes a bear might have startled the horse, setting off a chain of events that fatally injured her. Because of his finding, the state will pay for the Smiths' veterinarian bills, which added up to $600.
[Click here to read full story: Source]

Photo of Miss Dixie from WMUR site.