Just when most of us have forgotten about the numerous reports over the past few years of mountain lion sightings, along comes another. Only about 9 miles out of Rutland, in Pittsford on the Common Hill Road, travelers had lined up beside the road to watch an animal roaming about freely in an adjacent field.
One woman who lives nearby said that when she lived in Montana, she saw mountain lions there and she knows what she saw in the field was a mountain lion. Others who witnessed it said it was a big cat of some kind. There were perhaps as many as 6 witnesses.
A woman also pulled out her binoculars and watched the animal about 250 feet away. Another man took photographs.
What viewers described as odd, although most observers said they didn’t know the normal behavior of a mountain lion, was the animal didn’t seem shy or intimdated by the people watching. At one point the animal looked over at the people and began to approach them, then turned and headed into the forest.
Local game officials are saying that this is another one of those sightings where people claim to have seen a mountain lion. Tom Stearns, a Vermont Game Warden says they get reports all the time. He didn’t want to dispute what people are saying they saw, he simply says they need proof to substantiate it.
He says that if mountain lions do exist in Vermont, sooner or later they will find real evidence, like a carcass from a vehicle-lion accident, or good photographs, tracks, scat or anything verifiable. With all the reported sightings of these mammoth cats over the years, none of these revealing things have been produced. He says he will not argue with people in what they saw. He’ll just wait for the proof.
Tom Remington
