To the Editor:
Pumas or Montain Lions extinct here? I don’t believe it, nor do many people in Maine.
I have seen a mountain lion on two separate occasions. Maybe it was one twice or two separate ones. On my way to my cottage at Peter’s Cove in Orient, the road to it across from the Orient Town Office the former school house, was the first experience.
I had gone through the cow pasture and just entered a piece of woods that leads to another pasture where the Orient cemetery goes down to Peter’s Cove and part of the main shore, when out of the woods ran a big cat. The tail was at least 3-feet long and the cat was 4-feet. It was probably chasing probably a deer because he was on an old and still used deer track.
I had no time to get my camera as he was chasing something. One week later at almost the same time of morning again, I saw the animal run across Peter’s Cove road and soon was in the woods. This all happened about 10 years ago.
A few years earlier down in Wytopitlock Lake area, just after I had shot a partridge, a terrible scream/roar came out of the woods! Later, when I was watching a Disney film, the exactly same scream came from a real Mt. Lion in the film! So now I knew what made that awful sound just after my gunshot!
An old, late friend told me he had seen a black lion. He said often in a feline birth group, a black one appears! He fired at him and the shot went under the lion and he jumped straight up!
This Orient area has many deer, moose and partridge and lots of food. I do not believe these big cats are extinct. A cottage owner saw one chasing a deer up through her pasture land at McCallister Cove.
Eugene A Jackins
Houlton, ME
