Charlie McCracken of Greenfield sort of got lost in the shuffle, buried deep in my clogged Outlook Express Inbox, after coming forward with another Pioneer Valley cougar sighting. Upon receiving it, I read and red-flagged it, planning to revisit it in this space before it got buried. ”I always enjoy cougar-sighting articles and have to […]

First an old friend and new resident of Amherst who, on a fall afternoon in the car with her teenage son, saw a cougar cross the road in front of her on Northeast Street in Amherst. Then a sighting by another woman who spotted a cougar out the window of her Mount Warner Road home in […]

Yes, it’s old news but still worth sharing because of recurring themes from previous cougar sightings; and this one even includes a police department that believed its eyes, was convinced a big cat was lurking, one that presented potential danger. The town was Acton, about a half-hour northwest of Boston, the date Nov. 8, 2004. […]

Seems I can’t get away from cougars, mountain lions, catamounts, pumas or whatever you want to call them. The reports keep coming at me like the Connecticut River Coordinator’s office wishes Atlantic salmon were migrating up the valley. Thse days, there seems to be a flurry of big-cat sightings along the Montague/Leverett, MA., line, Sawmill […]

On the cougar front, two more interesting notes from readers; one arrived via snail-mail from an 80-year-old, Readsboro, Vt., poetess who grew up on her family farm in Marlboro, Vt., the other by e-mail from a Northfield resident. Both had something to share about western Massachusetts/Vermont cougar sightings. First the poetess, Bertha F. Akley, a […]

Two more cougar sightings, one in Pelham, the other in Shelburne. Where this investigative mission ends nobody knows, but the reports just keep on coming from credible witnesses with no apparent reason to lie. You be the judge. These two reports came last week, following a column had by a vignette about a Shelburne sighting […]

Before 6 a.m. on a spring morning, Amanda Gaffigan Steele of Plainfield was taking a circuitous route to work in Hatfield, traveling toward Greenfield on Route 2 near the overgrown Mohawk Mountain ski trails when she noticed something unusual crossing the road near Jed’s Cider Mill. Of a grayish brown hue, the large animal carried […]

Betty Waidlich may start getting strange looks again from people who recognize her making her daily rounds at the supermarket, gas station or beauty salon. A half century later, she’s letting the cat out the bag, so to speak — a big cat she told friends about in 1956, when she was stunned to see […]

What caught my attention on a midday stroll through the toasty dining room was a cardboard box on the wooden porch floor, next to it a packet of mail bundled with a heavy red rubber band. In the bundle was a sturdy white envelope with a return address to Northfield. Yes! The pictures from Judy […]

The phone message arrived at my Greenfield home Friday afternoon. Colleague Mark Durant left it. There had been a cougar sighting in West County, and the man who reported it, Will Blattner from Washington, D.C., had photos. Ah, for the wonders of BlackBerry technology. Blattner had somehow gotten my name, left his cell-phone number and […]