A retired animal control officer with cougar experience believes she spotted the elusive animal in northern Nova Scotia last week.
Heather Morrissey is convinced a large animal that crossed in front of her car last week was, in fact, a cougar.
“Right in front of us and Karl goes, ‘look at that kitty cat.’ He said ‘that’s the biggest kitty I’ve ever seen,’ and we’re looking again. I was shocked,” says Morrissey.
“When I first saw it, I mean, the whole body structure and the tail length and the markings. I mean, I’ve seen them before.”
The sighting lasted 10 seconds but the animal was gone before Morrissey could grab her phone and snap a photo.
Morrissey is now a farmer in Tatamagouche, N.S. but she was an animal control officer in Burlington, Ont. for 18 years. She says she had direct contact with cougars outside the city during that time.
“Dens we found were down near railway tracks and creeks and they usually used creek beds to get through the inner parts of the city,” she says.
Nova Scotia’s Natural Resources Department receives anywhere from 50 to 100 reported cougar sightings each year. However, no one has ever captured the animal and no physical evidence has ever accompanied a cougar sighting.
“Confirmed scat or fur, hair samples, tracks, it could be the carcass of an animal, obviously, and even photos or video that have had experts look at it and confirm that what they’re seeing is indeed a cougar,” says Shavonne Meyer, a biologist with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources.
Morrissey says she plans to keep an eye out for whatever animal it was she saw on the road that day, but has no plans to capture it.
“The only shooting I’m going to do is with a camera.”
With files from CTV Atlantic's Dan MacIntosh
