Supporting running in the metro Richmond area
BEWARE JAMES RIVER/NORTH BANK LION
I urge everyone to avoid the park system. I ran over the Nickel Bridge this evening, heard a cumbersome loud walking-in-the-brush noise below, looked down and saw a mountain lion. Obviously I ran away as fast as I could, ran to the police, and reported it at about 6:10 this evening. Stay on the roads! Warn your mountain bike friends. I was over the North Bank park, a couple minutes' run from the toll booth.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bert Waters on -
Hey Chevy,
We were just talking about running on the North Bank this Sunday... a "mountain lion" is another name for a cougar.
Checking the internet, not always accurate, the cougar has not been confirmed in Virginia since 1882. However, there have been many reported sitings lately. http://wolves.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/mountain-lions-in-virginia/
From a recent AP article originating from Blackstone VA: Experts doubt cougar sightings in frightened town http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/19/cougar.sightings.ap/index.html
Since 1900, only 64 sightings have been confirmed in the East outside of Florida, despite tens of thousands of reported sightings, said Mark McCollough, an endangered species biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who is leading a review of the eastern cougar.
This was cut and pasted from a hunting website...
Cougar (mountain lion, puma, panther)
This big cat goes by several names, but they all refer to the same animal. The North American cougar may be about the same size as a leopard, but he is far less aggressive and dangerous. Cougar are generally shy in the extreme, much preferring to just fade away.
Cougars are becoming more numerous and cougar encounters are increasing in frequency.In the very rare eventuality of a cougar attack, situational awareness is likely to be far more important than a powerful rifle. Human beings attacked by cougar usually have no hint of the animal's presence until the cat is upon them. The primary danger from a cougar is not being charged; it is being stalked! Never the less I, for one, am glad to see these fine North American cats increasing in numbers so long as they are listed as game animals.
Or... it could have been a bobcat: http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/article/cougar/24586/
Hope this helps!
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Permalink Reply by TheInnkeeper on -
What is really bothering me about the coverage of this in the news is people keep calling it a lion. It's not a lion
It is a Mountain Lion, or Cougar
as Bert said.
It's bad reporting by the locals that is spreading this misinformation and (if you can't tell) it's annoying me.
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Permalink Reply by b white on -
Sitings have been over the news for several weeks now (Bon Air, Salisbury, etc), including one last night on local news. Not sure they will know until the animal, if it exists, is found. Could it be a non-native "lion" someone had as pet which they lost. I can see they would not speak out on it fearing procecution/fines.
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Permalink Reply by Batmomm on -
not sure if it matters to me if it's a lion, cougar, jaguar, feral cat, etc while it's gnawing on my leg!
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Permalink Reply by Doug Fernandez on -
Don't believe any of these false sightings. There are people out there fabricating and spreading this big lie, and having a ball out of seeing people panicking with this rumor.
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Permalink Reply by Bert Waters on
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Meow Doug!
Chevy's no fear monger. I'm a pretty gullible person but if Chevy says she saw a big cat, she saw a big cat. I've seen a few foxes for the first time in Stratford Hills this last year and Ralph White said last year he saw a juvenile male black bear on Williams Island. Wildlife are moving into our urban neighborhoods. There's plenty of deer in James River Park System to keep a big cat fat. They are even included on the Species Booklet at the VA Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/information/?t=2
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Permalink Reply by Doug Fernandez on
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There is simply no evidence of cougars or mountain lions east of the Mississippi, with the exception of Florida. True, you can see bears, millions of deer, and all kinds of wildlife roaming around someone's backyard, but the eastern cougar has been extinct for over 200 years. As far as the possibility of it being a pet cat that broke loose from its owner, that is nonsense. Pet cats simply don't know how to hunt big prey like deer to keep themselves alive.
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Permalink Reply by Run Happy on -
"Wildlife are moving into our urban neighborhoods."....more likely we are moving into theirs........ As for the lion.... Just like with the black bear many said people were seeing things, that the "bear" was a big black dog, but yet, a bear was hit by a semi-truck and killed....
"Pet cats don't know how to hunt big prey" Correct, but it is also instinctual, but then again, one of the problems is no one has found any signs of this "cat", ie scat, killings, paw prints.
I hope there is not a lost mountain lion, but I also will not dismiss the possibility. Of course, the sitings will not keep me off the trails....not that I've run buttermilk in a while. Greata trails but they get old rather fast.
Run Happy
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Permalink Reply by Todd on -
I dont know about a lion on the on the North Bank, but I was out this weekend in the bars and saw a whole bunch of cougars!!
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Permalink Reply by TheInnkeeper on
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I love this term.
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Permalink Reply by Jesse on -
Random little trivia - large cats (lions, cougars, etc) can be legally kept as pets in Tennessee. Most of the large cats caught in the wild on the east coast show signs of having lived in captivity. I actually went to inspect a property outside of Knoxville that had formerly been owned by a cat breeder and those chain-link fences didn't look nearly sturdy enough to keep a 200-pound mountain lion in! Not your typical zoo security for private owners!
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