That Cougar on the back porch really gets around.

A similar situation is now going on near Hornell in southwestern New York. Mountain lion sightings have been rampant there the past couple of weeks, so much so that a local newspaper ran a news story that started with, "The presence of mountain lions in the area remains an unconfirmed reality among wildlife experts." I am still not sure what "unconfirmed reality" is, but I do know that, after reading the article, there are credible people down there who, as in those sightings I have written about up here, swear they saw a cougar. There is even a Web site with two photos of a cougar supposedly on someone’s patio in Hornell that comes with the e-mailed caption, "How would you like to see this guy on your back porch?"
That writer also claims that on a day of one cougar sighting, a DEC representative "confirmed it was a cougar." The writer adds that the DEC person confirms, "There are at least 10 cougars living between Hornell, Corning, N.Y. to Wellsboro, Pa."
I checked with DEC, and, though they are sympathetic to those who called in cougar reports, they want hard evidence. What about that photo? Isn’t that proof enough? Turns out that that photo of the cougar on the patio has been circulating on the Internet for a while and, before Hornell, had terrorized the cyberspace in parts of Michigan before migrating to New York!
One line from that so-called Hornell Web site would do any campfire storyteller proud. It reads, "Watch your back if you have a camp or cottage in the area." I only wish my computer had a screensaver that looked like flickering flames of a campfire. I would probably slide my chair a little closer to the monitor.
The setting for telling campfire stories may have expanded since I was a kid, but some of that same old imagination and mystery still remain.