An animal from the frontier past. But it's not gone. Or is it?

Controversy rages in Pennsylvania and other wooded states, such as Tennessee, as to whether mountain lions (also called cougars, panthers, painters, and other names) have actually been 'extirpated', as the various game commissions claim. The argument usually goes like this:

'I seen it. It was HUGE!'

'Had you been drinking?'

'Not that much!'

'Could it have been a bobcat?'

A bobcat is about three feet (1 meter) long. As you can see from this actual preserved panther, it's considerably larger than that. It also looks more lion-like and less like a bad-tempered longhaired kittycat.

Panthers once roamed all over these hills. And everybody I know says they're still around, though rarer than before. It's no wonder that all our sports teams are named 'panthers': the Pitt Panther (University of Pittsburgh), the Nittany Lion (Penn State University), and Knox, PA's Keystone (High School) Panthers.

The ones people are spotting aren't black, though. Usually just tawny, like this fellow. He's a three-year-old male, fully grown, about 11 feet from nose to tail. Impressive. His appearance explains the fear he engendered among early settlers. In his Awakening Land, Conrad Richter paints a vivid picture of being trapped in a single-room cabin by a determined 'painter'.

My dad told me they used to be fairly common in Tennessee when he was growing up. He described their cry as bloodcurdling, and pointed out that this was the only type of wildlife that would stalk a human. Back in the 1930s, my grandfather was offered a piece of farmland, which he declined to buy, as he couldn't farm more land than he had already. He asked his friend why he was selling up.

'There's a family of painters nearby,' he replied. 'They watch the house. I'm afraid to go to the fields and leave my wife and children there alone. I thought a farmer who lived somewhere else might take it up. But I've got to move.'

Humans do not always have the upper hand.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

16.11.20 Front Page

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