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Editor's ViewpointMeditations Of A Minnesota Mossback |
Stories About Wild Things …
I read this news report about three possible cougar sightings in Eagan near Fort Snelling State Park. I’m partial to stories about Wild Things. Who isn’t? Normally, wild animal sightings get reported to the DNR: however, anecdotal evidence does not compute.
Possible sightings are usually chalked up to a case of mistaken identity, an overactive imagination, or too much merriment of the alcoholic kind.
Or labeled as “Cougarmania, Version 2009.0.”
If the sighting happens to be confirmed, as happens rarely (it’s difficult to otherwise explain away a dead cougar on the roadside), the tendency seems to be to explain it away (the cougar found in Bemidji last month was apparently “just on its way to Wisconsin from South Dakota” when it was hit by a car).
Two possible cougar sightings this past summer were reported by residents to Eagan police. Last month, cougar scat was seen at the Eagan police gun range. In the latest sighting, however, the spotter was a city parks worker—on duty—at one o’clock in the afternoon.
Cougars, or mountain lions, tend to avoid humans. They travel alone. There is plenty of four-legged wildlife on which they can subsist without bothering the twolegged kind.
Certainly, Hugo, Centerville and Lino Lakes residents are far more likely to lose a family dog or cat to a coyote than a cougar.
But everyone admits that coyotes live around here: we can hear them! What is the problem with the idea that cougars could be living in eastern Hugo?
We had our share of “panther” spottings here in the late 90s, although no one lent the reports any credence until a Washington County deputy actually spotted the black cat crossing the road right in front of his squad car over Good Neighbor Days weekend—at about 9 p.m. (It was speculated to have been an escaped snow leopard, and not a native cat.)
However, I personally have no doubt that wild things may occasionally call Hugo home.
I have spoken with people who have recovered the remains of their animals, clearly done in by a large carnivore.
I have chatted with others whose pets wandered in the back yard only to be attacked and killed by coyotes.
But to be fair, the DNR—which is in charge of keeping track of such things—there have only been three indisputable sightings of cougars over the past fifteen years in Minnesota (see http://easterncougar.org/ CougarNews/?p=959 for a good story) and they have all been young males, ostensibly pushed out beyond the species’ preferred breeding grounds in South Dakota.
Officials earnestly maintain that there is no coverup going on—there is simply no irrefutable evidence that Minnesota houses any cougar breeding populations.
Most of the photos emailed as “evidence” have been debunked as hoaxes, making their rounds as hoaxes do (like the posted photo of the Hugo tornado that clearly wasn’t taken in Hugo).
I rather doubt I will ever actually see a wild cougar in my neighborhood.
But when I go out at night, I always consider that I share the night hours with the untamed creatures of this world. Possum, skunk, porcupine, raccoon, muskrat, beaver, coyote, cougar: I give them all just as wide a berth as they’re likely to give me.
And maybe more.
Why did the cougar cross the road?
To show the raccoon it could be done.