A New Canaan woman on Monday saw a mountain lion while walking her dog in the northern part of the town, and New Canaan Police are classifying her report as a credible cougar sighting, the third in 2018.
Officer Allyson Halm, head of the New Canaan Police Department’s Animal Control section, called for residents in the area of Briscoe and North Wilton Roads to check surveillance videos for images of the animal.
Photo from the National Park Service
North American mountain lion, also known as a cougar, in Glacier National Park in Montana.
— This article originally was published by NewCanaanite.com.
“We have had enough sightings that we believe are credible and people just need to always be alert,” Halm said. “We do live in the woods. Everyone needs to be prepared to see a bear, to see a mountain lion, always. We can’t let our guard down. We don’t need to panic but we have to be smart when we are out there.”
The sighting, by Margaret Cooper of Briscoe Road, follows one in April on Marvin Ridge Road and another in January on Nursery Road (both, unlike this siting, in the southern end of New Canaan, near Darien).
Cooper said the mountain lion emerged about 20 to 30 yards away, from a property across the street from her home.
About the 3.5 to four feet tall, auburn in color with a long tail, high hindquarters and the head and gait of a cat—all telltale signs of mountain lions, as opposed to bobcats—the cougar “just sauntered across the road and never looked in our direction,” Cooper told NewCanaanite.com.
“It didn’t seem to pay any attention to us at all,” she said.
Cooper added: “I never in my wildest dreams expected to see one in my own neighborhood. It just sauntered across the road, onto our property and then disappeared into the trees.”
She did not take a picture of the animal.
Mountain lions have been known to travel through Fairfield County in the past. Two years ago, a woman claimed to see a mountain lion on a Fox Run Road property in New Canaan, though state officials said they were unable to confirm the sighting based on paw prints left by the animal.
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Other large animals in New Canaan:
- Bobcats Spotted Just North of Darien: Potential Danger to Cats But Not Humans (Nov. 29, 2017)
- Signs About Coyotes Going up in Waveny Park Just North of Darien (April 6, 2017)
Fauna in Darien:
- Aquarium: Keep a Certain Distance from Whales in Long Island Sound (July 28, 2017)
- Twelve Amazing Photos of Dolphins in Long Island Sound (May 31, 2017)
- Coyotes Attacking Pets in Darien, One Dog Killed (Dec. 16, 2016)
- No Owner Comes Forward to Claim Ferret Found on West Ave, But a Woman Adopts It (Oct. 3, 2016)
- Watch this Video of a Darien Police Officer Rescuing a Fawn from a Driveway Grate (Aug. 12, 2016)
- Found in Darien: One Boa — Not Less, Not Moa (April 25)