Minnesota Dead Cougar Hard To Ignore

Bob Kelleher on Minnesota Public Radio has written of the breaking news that the finding of a body of a mountain lion or cougar happens to be the 7th confirmed sighting in the last 14 months:

A dead cougar turned up over the weekend in Pope County, Minnesota, according to a report on Alexandria television KSAX. The station had also reported recently on a cougar sighting nearby that state Department of Natural Resources officials dismissed as a large house cat.

Now the station is posting pretty convincing photos of a large, male, and very dead cougar laying in grass next to a coffee cup.

I’m assuming the cup is intended to demonstrate the cat’s relative size, and has nothing to do with the animal’s death. I mean, I’ve had some strong coffee before, but …

I just reported on Minnesota Public Radio of an increasing number of mountain lion sightings in Minnesota over the last two years.

Glenwood, Minn., Area Wildlife Supervisor Kevin Kotts was not available Monday (Nov 15, 2010).

I spoke at some length with a former DNR biologist who now studies things like cougars and Canada lynx on a contract basis. He worries about the public perception that there’s some kind of department conspiracy going to suppress reports of cougar sightings.

Some people, apparently, believe the DNR is either covering up what it knows about cougars in Minnesota, or worse yet, that the department has actually introduced mountain lions into the state, the biologist said.

He assures me that both theories are complete bunk. The cougars are almost certainly individual young males looking for lady cats, and wandering in from the western Dakotas, where they’ve pretty much filled up the region’s capacity for cougars. There’s still no evidence mountain lions are staying, or reproducing in Minnesota.

But now, a dead cougar will almost certainly re-fire the theories.

Loren Coleman 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.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •