Meanwhile, an earlier eyewitness, Cynthia Seligowski of Brentwood explains the movements of a mountain lion she believes she spotted on her Middle Road lawn a week ago today.
(Cunningham/Democrat Photo)
September 20, 2009
No physical evidence has been found by officials of the State of New Hampshire confirming the first cougar in 140 years is there, but officials are taking seriously a new report of a sighting.
Do you wonder why? Because one of their own staff members saw it.
The sighting occurred late Wednesday [September 16, 2009] in Barnstead, as the staff member for New Hampshire Fish and Game Department was following up on a citizen’s reported sighting, said Mark Ellingwood, a wildlife biologist with the department. The staff member was walking on a trail and spotted the mountain lion about 30 yards away. It was in sight for about 10 seconds.
“The animal slipped away, and that was the end of the encounter,” Ellingwood said.
The sighting appears credible, he said. But like the 100 or so mountain lion reports each year, this one failed to yield any tracks, hair or scat that would convince scientists a mountain lion had definitely passed that way.
If the Barnstead cat were indeed a mountain lion, it is likely a captive animal someone brought into the state and then released, Ellingwood said.
Of course, no one knows where this cougar came from, or if it is a wild specimen, an escaped captive, a released panther, or even if it fell from heaven. Explaining away the origins of this mystery cat before there is even any physical evidence of it to be tested, sure smells a bit of the past official silencing of such reports.
This media account nicely balances, in an unusual move, the above with the following:
“They’re unmistakable,” said Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, a writer who studied mountain lions in Colorado in preparation for her book “The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture.” “There isn’t anything else that looks like a mountain lion.”
Thomas said she spotted a mountain lion in 1992 in the field of her Peterborough home and that her son saw one in recent weeks. A friend saw one lying dead by the road, she said, but the carcass was gone by the time he returned.
“Fish and Game is very reluctant to acknowledge they’re here and have been for years,” she said. “You don’t need to be a scientist to know it’s a mountain lion.”
Meanwhile, an earlier eyewitness, Cynthia Seligowski of Brentwood explains the movements of a mountain lion she believes she spotted on her Middle Road lawn a week ago today.
(Cunningham/Democrat Photo)
Seligowski, an artist who is not particularly thrilled with all the media coverage she has been receiving since her sighting took place, said she has little doubt about what she saw and has already discussed her sighting with Fish and Game. She has since learned other sightings have taken place up and down Route 107.
She said the animal appeared calm and very healthy as it sat on her lawn. She considers herself lucky to have seen one.
Join the BCSCC and other organizations in supporting the International Cryptozoology Museum as it opens in downtown Portland, Maine. Have your name added to the plaque on the wall of the museum honoring everyone who gives, all of whom are “Museum Heroes,” no matter what amount donated. Give a $100 and get the limited edition “Grand Opening” teeshirt. Have your name listed, along with other patrons and benefactors like the BCSCC, Matt Walker, David Pescovitz, John Hodgman, and Kevin Hemenway!
Please click on the button below (not the one up top) to take you to PayPal to send in your museum donation.
If you wish to send in your donation via the mails, by way of an international money order or, for the USA, via a check (made out to “International Cryptozoology Museum”) or money order, please use this snail mail address:
Loren Coleman, Director
International Cryptozoology Museum
PO Box 360
Portland, ME 04112
Thank you, and come visit the museum at 661 Congress Street, Portland, Maine 04101, beginning November 1, 2009!! This educational/scientific/natural history museum is not a 501(c)3.
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.
Filed under Alien Big Cats, Breaking News, CryptoZoo News, Eyewitness Accounts, Mystery Cats