“I kind of doubt they saw a cougar, but I’m not God.” “We’ve been here 45 years and I’ve probably been told by people at least 100 times that they’ve seen a cougar or mountain lion,” said owner Vince Hall. Paws ’N’ Claws Animal Park in the Poconos has two. Mountain lions live in rescue centers like Murray’s, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission said a dozen or so people are permitted to possess them. “While it seems unlikely, it’s not impossible that these animals are showing up in PA,” said David Foster, a biology professor at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg.Īn escapee is also possible. Biologists traced it back to the Black Hills of South Dakota, from where it ventured nearly 2,000 miles looking for a new mate. The claim of mountain lions on the move was bolstered in 2009 when one was killed by a car in Greenwich, Conn. There is also a small population of cougars in Florida. But many others believe wild mountain lions are traveling from Western states, where as many as 30,000 could exist, and across the Midwest to Pennsylvania seeking new territory. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared the Eastern subspecies of the mountain lion extinct, which would seem to bolster the skeptics. “The day will come,” he said, “when someone will pull the trigger on a mountain lion.”

But Dave “Gadget” Jones, a retired wildlife conservation officer from Lackawanna County, claims he’s seen a white bigfoot and a UFO in Pennsylvania, so who knows? Jones has never seen a mountain lion, but he thinks they’re prowling around. Some have even reported seeing a “black panther,” a near-impossibility because of the rarity of that recessive gene. “If my son would have been on a pedal bike, without a helmet on, that thing would have nailed him,” said Walters, 44. In August, Amy Walters said her 12-year-old son was spooked by a mountain lion in Forest County in northwest Pennsylvania while riding his dirt bike. The woman, a 66-year-old grandmother, asked not to be identified because she’s a senior and didn’t want people “bothering” her about it. “When I started telling people, most of them didn’t believe me, but I will never forget that huge face staring right at me,” said a Montgomery County woman who says she saw a lion last summer in Limerick Township while walking her dog.

Panther prowling black mountain lion