A few new developments on the cougar front that’s gaining momentum like a runaway locomotive on a steep descent since first mention of it here 15 months ago.

Let me think … what came first?

Oh yeah, the guy from Templeton. He’s been reading about cougars in this space and had something important to share; been trying unsuccessfully to contact me. Was I intentionally ignoring his e-mails or were they for some reason not reaching me?

I wrote back after receiving what he claimed was the third message he’d sent. “No, I’m not ignoring you, this is the first e-mail I’ve seen. Please tell. When’s the best time to reach you?”

He promptly replied with a phone number and the best time to reach him. I called and had a quick chat from my work desk. Seemed like a credible source. Has a friend who worked at the Quabbin several years. Friend says, regardless of what they say officially, it is know that cougars are living on the state reservation. Figure there’s six of them living there and, with plenty of food, they’re not ranging far. Supposedly there’s a known rocky location people stay away from … shallow caves the big cats seem to like.

“Please keep your mouth shut,” his friend reportedly told him. “I could get in trouble for talking about it. We are told not to admit anything. But they’re here and people know it.”

Sure, it sounds a little wild. But remember, there was a beaver kill-site found by a professional tracker in 1997, scat was collected, tested and identified as that of a cougar, an Eastern cougar. Backed into a corner, the authorities said it was an escaped pet, not a wild beast. Now this.

Hmmmm?

It gets better. …

When I came into work a night or two later, a colleague told me to listen to a message on my voicemail, “You’ll be interested.”

Sure enough, I was. … It was a local state cop I’ve known for many years. A cougar crossed the road in front of his wife last week on Route 9, around Cummington. No mistaking it, a big cat. “Been reading your columns about the subject and thought I’d pass it along. Guess they’re here.”

More fuel to the fire. And, believe me, I don’t go looking for it. It’s been coming at me in a steady stream since last winter. Where it ends, only time will tell.

A couple of days ago, midday, another Recorder colleague e-mailed me a link to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about big-cat sightings in western Pennsylvania. The Sunday story is accompanied by a picture of a large cat track in the snow next to the boot of a Post-Gazette account executive who discovered it on a hike.

The report is nothing new in western Pennsylvania or elsewhere in the Northeast, where, according to the article, there have been more than 1,000 sightings of big cats with long tails in recent years. That’s probably a modest estimate given the many reports we’re received right here in the greater Pioneer Valley.

Although no one from a wildlife agency visited the Pennsylvania site to confirm that the tracks had indeed been made by a cougar, neither the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGM) nor the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFW) was willing to deny the possibility.

“I never say never when it comes to these kinds of things,” said PGM spokesman Mel Schake. “There are enough of these calls coming in from around the state that there’s something out there. There’s now an effort to determine do we or don’t we have any of these.”

That brand-new effort is being led by the USFW, which as recently as six months ago would not even discuss the topic of cougar sightings. Apparently, times have changed. Now the agency is not ruling out an Eastern cougar comeback, and is reviewing scientific and commercial information to determine the status of the Eastern cougar. The study is being conducted out of the USFW’s Northeast Regional Office, right down the road in Hadley, the first study of its type since 1982. Back then, field researcher Virginia Fifield was stationed in the Happy Valley to investigate cougar sightings. She investigated many and confirmed one track in the Goshen State Forest mud.

If a thorough investigation is conducted, it’ll be interesting to follow … very much so.