CALEDONIA, Wis. -- Anna Lashley can't forget her surprise when she looked out her kitchen window three years ago and spotted a big cat.
Cougar in Northeast MN, about 47 miles from the WI border Courtesy: Wisconsin D.N.R.
"I looked up and there's this lion in the back yard, and I thought it must have gotten away from the zoo," she said. "I called the zoo, and they said they hadn't lost one."
She's convinced the animal that quickly departed was a cougar, also known as a mountain lion. The animals were wiped out in most of the eastern U.S. a century ago but have recently shown up again, migrating from the Black Hills of South Dakota into places like Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Deer commonly graze on Lashley's rural property just south of Milwaukee. During the past three years, she said she's seen cougars from her window several times. Her 47-year-old son, Joel Lashley, said he was there for the most recent sighting on March 28.
"It was a big one," he said, estimating the cat was bigger than a German shepherd, with a tail about half as long as its body.
"It turned to the side and then just leaped right through there," he said, pointing to the row of pine trees at the edge of the property.
The Lashleys aren't alone in the encounters.
State game managers get scores of reported sightings each year. They try to determine which are false, which are other animals, such as bobcats, and which are cougars.
Only two cougars have been confirmed. One was seen and left clear tracks in the snow in the Milton area of Rock County in January 2008. It was killed that April by police in a Chicago alley, some 100 miles away.
Bear hunters treed the second near Spooner in Barron County in March. It was photographed before an attempt to tranquilize it and attach a tracking collar failed, and the animal ran off. Full story here
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