I tried to get off the big-cat chase last week, just mentioning it in passing at the end of the column; but apparently readers haven’t had enough yet, thus the e-mails and phone calls reporting additional cougar information over the past seven days.

As I sat at my desk Wednesday morning mulling options for this week’s column, first an e-mail from Marilyn Berthelette greeted me to report a Feb. 13 cougar sighting on North Taylor Hill in Montague, then a phone call from Roger Ward to report a confirmed sighting in Alstead, N.H., where his brother was a longtime chief of police. But let’s not digress. When I sat down to pen this narrative, I intended to focus on the Whately Glen, and several sightings there. So let’s travel to that idyllic spot some three miles west of Sugarloaf Mountain. Once known as Sanderson’s Glen, it’s a location I happen to know a little bit about. Fifth great grandfather Deacon Thomas Sanderson lived and ran grist and sawmills there until his 1824 death, and the family remained there until the mid-1930’s, when the property changed hands.

The first cougar sighting I ever heard of occurred at the Glen in the early 1970s, when the basin for the upper South Deerfield reservoir was being cleared. A couple of local boys were having lunch when, to their amazement, a cougar walked right past them. Since starting this cougar chase 2½ months ago, I have received three additional reports of cougar sightings in the wild, densely wooded area. Let’s take a look.

Our first sighting was reported by Chet Ostrowski Jr., whose family ran a farm for many years just northeast of Trinski’s Pond, where he was surprised to spot a cougar along the northern perimeter of the Great Swamp, as dense a jungle as you’ll find in Franklin County. “I never said anything about it because I thought people would think I was crazy,” Ostrowski said. “I happened to see movement up against the woods and it ran up a deadfall, gave a blood-curdling screech and disappeared into the woods. It was about 100 yards away when I saw it; had to be six feet long. It all happened very fast.”

Ostrowski isn’t alone. Two other witnesses, totally unfamiliar with Ostrowski’s tale, came forward to report cougar sightings in the area — ones difficult to dispute.

The first report came from John K. Parker, who lives a stone’s throw from Trinski’s Pond, on Hobbie Rd in the Mill River section of Deerfield. His sighting occurred some 15 years ago, when his son was still napping daily and he and his wife had discovered that a ride in the car could lull him to sleep. It was during such a slumber ride, about 3 on a Thanksgiving afternoon, that Parker’s cougar sighting occurred.

“Living in sight of White Birch Campgrounds, our natural route conducive to napping was the slow-paced Whately Glen Road that connects North Street in Whately with Conway’s Roaring Brook Road. When we headed east from Conway onto the Glenn road, after passing the last house and a pond/swampy flatland, we headed into the woods. Almost immediately, this monster cat with a long tail streaked across our path, left to right. Having witnessed much wildlife activity in our yard, with bobcats, fisher cat, coyotes, bear, turkeys, and deer, it didn’t seem unreasonable to add ‘lion.’”

A more recent sighting, not far from Parker’s or Ostrowski’s, was made by then 16-year-old snowmobiler Greg Barlow on a February morning in 1997, while riding his sled through the Glen from Deerfield to his hometown of Conway. Barlow recalls following a snowmobile trail along the Deerfield side of Roaring Brook, between the two reservoirs, when some movement on the right side of the trail caught his attention. He assumed it was a coyote at first, but when it crossed the trail in front of him he knew he was observing something special, a big cat.

“I know what I saw and it was no bobcat or fisher;” Barlow said on the phone, “it was a mountain lion, gray-brown with a long tail almost as big around as a soda can. It was 30 yards away and bound right in front of the sled. I could see its huge muscles and head. There was a lot of snow on the ground but it cleared the snow pretty good and was long, a big animal.”

Barlow was way ahead of his traveling companions so he stopped and he stepped off his sled. The cougar took some “huge bounds” through the deep snow, then stopped some 30 to 40 yards away and turned facing him. “It looked right at me, big eyes and whiskers, shorter ears, then took off when it heard my friends approaching.”

How many more reports like this must we hear before attaching credibility to cougar sightings?

Stay tuned … I still haven’t even touched on the other side of the story, that of the Doubting Thomases.