Photo courtesy of Anonymous student.
This semester is a strange one. We’re scared of things that normally wouldn’t frighten us: sniffles, hidden coughs, visible noses—things that once seemed normal, ordinary. And yet, a recent buzz of rumors appears to set the record straight on what is truly hair-raising enough to get even the hardiest Camels among us gossiping.
“It was big, so I thought it was a deer at first,” an anonymous ‘21 eyewitness accounts, describing the campus’ most recent, and soon virally infamous, visitor. Did you hear? About the Mountain Lion on the Green? For several days, the mysterious cat was the talk of the town, a conversation starter met with both excitement and skepticism.
“I’ve seen two big dogs on campus this week. Are people overreacting?” one student posted to the account @missed.conn.ections, while the Instagrammers behind the campus connections account raised the question: “are there… mountain lions… in Connecticut?”
But the wildcat had its fair share of believers too: “I saw it, literally I can provide details,” someone writes, among the influx of jokes that “maybe he [the cat] was just… lion on the Green”.
“I was honestly excited,” another student ‘21 admits. “There’s so much random wildlife on campus and I was excited for another animal to join the crew.”
I had the chance to speak with the student ‘21 who’d witnessed the sighting first-hand, at 1 a.m. outside of Harkness. “I thought it was a coyote, because it was definitely not a deer,” she discloses, “but I have seen a coyote before, and it didn’t look like a dog-like creature at all.” She recalls that the animal darted out between Fanning and Bill Hall, and that it was visible for about five to ten seconds. “It looked like a big cat and it ran towards Cummings. I saw a tail that was long, so I don’t think it was a bobcat…I remember the silhouette and it looked like what you see online.”
Multiple sources reported that the animal’s prints could be seen in the snow beyond the South Campus dorms. I was able to get a hold of a circulating photograph depicting the critter’s paw.
Online, it appears that the central difference between cougar and dog tracks is the amount of ‘lobes’ on their central heel pads, with lions having two at the front and three at the back (2:3), and coyotes and wolves having just one lobe up front, and only two at the base of the heel (1:2). Though it’s a little unclear, the photographed print does indicate an expression of that latter 1 to 2 lobe ratio. This would suggest that the documented track is that of a dog.
While these prints were found in the general vicinity of where the creature was spotted, whether they correspond directly to the sighting reported or not remains in question.
Arboretum Director Miles Sax, though, is quick to side with the cynics: “bobcats are regularly seen in the area, including on several occasions in my backyard on Williams street.” He reports that multiple families living around the Arboretum have observed these smaller, short-tailed lynxes crossing their properties as well, and recommends the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s website for a concrete list of the animals’ likely habitat span and recent sightings.
“While mountain lions have historically been known to have a range that expanded to the East Coast, they are considered to be extinct within our range,” he adds. He also notes that if students catch sight of animals that make them feel uneasy, or that are acting erratically, they should reach out to Campus Safety and to the Arboretum, who will work alongside animal control and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to ensure that the community stays safe.
“With Connecticut College being nestled within the 750-acre Arboretum, we are lucky to have a large amount of conserved forest and wildlife habitat,” Sax says, “as a result, we do tend to see a large diversity of wildlife on college land.” His hope is that “all students, staff and faculty have the opportunity to explore the Arboretum and the wonderful diversity of habitats it holds.”
But fact or fiction, our campus’ possible brush with a cat of unusual size remains a strange and fun concept to play with. And with how these past few months have been going, to many the rumor didn’t seem so outlandish, either. I asked students what they’d do if they came across a cougar on their way to lunch, as the Internet recommends making yourself big and noisy. “Pass away,” is all an alum ‘19, has to comment.
