dead "kitty"

Well the DNA tests are in.

Turns out that
the healthy male cougar* hit by an SUV while crossing the Merit Parkway
in Connecticut (fairly densely populated SW Connecticut, close to New
York City) is not as first believed somebody's illegal pet escaped or
abandoned. Well they had begun having doubts because the cursory
examination revealed not declawed and no ID microchip implanted but
were insisting couldn't be a wild one (just weeks before had been an
official declaration that the eastern cougar was extinct and any
sightings must be escapees that might survive a short while in the
wild).

The eastern cougar was (or is) slightly smaller than the western, presumably because the "white tail deer" is smaller than the "mule deer". And when I said that they had declared the eastern cougar extinct that didn't include the stuggling population of the even smaller "Florida panther" (the "key deer" are smaller than the "white tail"). It doesn't pay these cats to be any larger than necessary to take down their largest prey. That's why the bobcat is again much smaller since it needs be big enough to take turkeys and geese but there isn't prey between that size and deer.

This cat began in South Dakota and travelled
the ~2000 miles to Connecticut on its own paws as the DNA matches scat samples from
Minnesota near Mineapolis collected in 2009 and from Wisconsin in 2010 (but in between there and Connecticut they don't know what route the cougar used)



* aka mountain lion, aka puma, aka catamount, or for the scientifically inclined, Puma concolor

Not just one kitty.

"Indian Country Today" (of all things) had an article about the cats wandering from the Black Hills of South Dakota. Presumably because the origin of these kitties is the Lakota Reservation.

Apparently four different ones had been identified going through Wisconsin (already a long way from home).

BTW -- the one that was road killed near here represents the longest distance a land mammal has been proven to travel.

We are in Central Florida nd the WT Deer are much smaller than deer less than two hundred miles north. No wonder the Florida Panther is so much smaller than its more northern cousins.