Bayview Beast
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 2nd, 2008
Newsday’s Sophia Chang and Arielle Brechisci have a few things to say about a new Mystery Cat report in New York State:
The latest in Long Island animal antics takes the shape of a purported mountain lion roaming through the Bayview neighborhood in Southold, according to a complaint made to police last week.
Around 9 a.m. Oct. 17, [2008] a very large cat was spotted strolling across a lawn and into the woods near Waterview Drive, said John, a resident who declined to give his last name.
“I pulled up into my driveway and I could see it as plain as day, walking across my neighbor’s lawn,” he said. He reported the sighting to police.
He described the cat as 5 to 6 feet long, not including the tail, and resembling a mountain lion.
“We have to believe there’s something there,” said Southold Police Chief Carlisle Cochran Jr. on Friday [October 25, 2008].
“I don’t think it’s running stray in Bayview,” he said. “I have to believe this is someone’s pet who gets out once in a while.”
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Does anyone know what the terrain and the lay of the land is in the area this sighting took place in? How feasible is it that this cat could stay hidden for any appreciable length of time?
This has to be a released or escaped animal.
Europeans started settling on Long Island in 1641 and of course, they weren’t known for respecting local wildlife and habitat. Deer (primary food for lions) were virtually extinct on the island by 1890 and had to be reintroduced in the 1920s. Given the loss of deer, the population density and conversion of much of the island to agricultural production, I don’t think there is any way wild lions could have survived on the island up to today.
The deer have rebounded but then they will thrive in a suburban environment. I believe hunting for deer on the island is virtually non-existent. Today, there are some wildlife refuges and nice wooded areas on the island. Maybe enough to hide an individual cougar for a time, but certainly not enough for a wild, breeding population to remain undetected. The Adirondacks is a much more likely habitat for wild cougars to occur.
Folks on Long Island – how wild are your “wild areas”? It would be interesting to contrast them to the wild areas of places like Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas and the far western states.
Alligator- That’s pretty much what I was thinking. I’m not intimately familiar with that area, but it seems to me in this day and age, Long Island is not prime big cat habitat. If anyone has any other insights along those lines, I’d like to hear them.
I’m curious about the description given of the cat. The witness said it “resembled” a mountain lion, and that seems very cryptic to me. Are they suggesting it was a mountain lion, or are there any details pointing to another type of big cat? By the witness’s account, he saw it “plain as day”, and that leads me to think they’d have an idea what kind of cat it was. So what was it, a mountain lion or something else?
like i always say.. if it may look like a mountain lion doesn’t mean it is. 🙂
Since it said Resembling. We may not be looking at a Ordinary feline we know.. It could be a new Speicies, new Hybrid/unknown to science. Call me Crazy, but i’m always thinking about Smilodon and others of it’s kind. 🙂 so any unknown cat or a cat resembling another it comes to my brain that i can be a smilodon of the modern times or others of it’s kind.
It could even be a smilodon hybrid with a known feline.. XD
i would love to see a Lion or Lioness hybrid with a Smilodon or it’s kind. 🙂 can be called a Smilion.
Liondon, or Tigdon, Smiloger, XD…
for all we know we don’t even know how they look. they could of had a mane like a lion. they could of been yellow, brown, orange, white, black, blue, red, pink, green…etc. noticing cats for instance all colors from black, orange, yellow, gray, beige, bald, dirty pale yellow in which i describe a Siamese cat. from spots to stripes.
smilodon and it’s kind could be a dalmatian of the feline kind.
maybe the males had manes and females didn’t. 🙂 maybe they not feline XD just a open thought there.
Pumas, like leopards, can hide in surprisingly small spaces.