I know some readers are sick of this stuff. A few good ole’ boys have even felt compelled to compose scathing letters to the editor. Then again, there are those who can’t get enough. So what to do when you sit in my chair and a story like this one drops into your lap?

It came via snail mail. I arrived at work and found a plump envelope resting on my desk, one that had the look and feel of a resume. The absence of a return address told me it was no resume, though, and piqued my curiosity further. I briefly suspected hate mail but quickly ruled that out. I have never received multi-page mail of that nature. Hate mail is typically short, vicious and to the point, often grammatically, uhm, challenged. I was convinced it was something worth reading, probably about cougars, maybe salmon, perhaps biomass or Wal-Mart or some other controversial issue I’ve chimed in on over the years. I couldn’t resist opening it and taking a look, so I peeled back a corner of the sealed flap, worked my index finger inside the inch-long hole and tore a jagged line along the fold. Sure enough, cougars.

The tidy letter (I only found a few minor typos in five single-spaced pages) began with a formal, six-line business address topped by my name in the upper left-hand corner. Then the intro began with a razor-sharp, barbed treble hook: “You seem to have run out of information relative to mountain lions but have established a proven record of honest interest in these animals locally. Consequently, this is a belated Christmas gift in hopes you can use it coupled with your investigative credentials to advance knowledge of mountain lion presence here.”

Hmmmmm? Interesting, indeed, but no time to carefully read it, organized in three bold-faced, labeled segments, “Published,” “Unpublished” and “Unsubstantiated.” Nonetheless, I skimmed through it, got the gist, and arrived at the end, where it was signed “CAU,” followed by the postscript: “Name omitted due to location and the traffic it may cause if you printed my name and address, but I will respond to any information or questions printed in your column if I know
the answer and subject demands response.”

The writer is an artist who believes in local cougars because he and his wife have seen them. The first sighting occurred several years ago on Route 2 in Shelburne as the couple drove past the old Mt. Mohawk Ski Area. Years later, his wife turned on two 500-watt floodlights to illuminate their backyard from the deck and came face-to-face with a big cat passing through. That animal “whirled around and stared directly into her face, waited, then turned and bounded off, tail high. As she described the ears and tail, there was no question but what this was a mountain lion like we had seen on the Trail.”

The man even ventures off into the common subplot of government conspiracy and secrecy, accusing MassWildlife’s Western District office of receiving, reviewing, substantiating, then burying photographic evidence of a Berkshire County cat furnished by a private citizen. I’d rather not go
there; have heard it or similar accusations many times in the past. They’re not worth chasing for many reasons, foremost that there is zero chance of confirming such a tale through state wildlife officials. Zilch. Especially now that you must first go through an annoying state Executive
Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs filter before speaking to any state employee. If something must be hidden, it will be. You can thank dandy former Gov. Mitt Romney for that. But let us not digress into politics. Back to the letter, which delves into a fascinating discussion on color manipulation under different concentrations of light, according to our source, the reason big-cat reports vary in color from black to gray to brown depending upon where and what time of day they are seen. And remember, this analysis comes courtesy of an artist who is familiar with
the way color changes under different light.

The first hint of this color-altering dynamic appears early in the narrative, paragraph five, when describing the Mohawk Trail sighting, a road-crossing from the overgrown ski area to the old Taylor farm, now Kenburn Orchards Bed & Breakfast: “As the animal traveled through the shade into the sunlight and out, it changed from gray to auburn to a light sienna (rust) and then back as it passed in front of us.” Get the point? The animal appeared to be several different colors during the same brief sighting by a trained eye. It gets better later, when the writer returns to an in-depth color discussion to conclude his piece.

Because I do not understand the relationship between light and color nearly as well as my source, I am about to do something I usually avoid like the plague when writing: lengthy quotes. To me, extended, uninterrupted attribution in a piece like this is lazy. A writer should be able to capture conversation by paraphrasing and writing, not quoting, except for short snippets delivered for sudden impact, maybe humor. I often find myself feeling the same way about dialogue in fiction, even from the masters, including my own favorite, the great Hamsun. I would rather be told what was said and why, not read quotations. But that’s just me.

Nonetheless, here I am about to violate one of my own golden rules by quoting verbatim my source’s scientific analysis of why the color of cougars can vary so from sighting to sighting. Sorry. Here it is. Rather than using quotation marks, I’ll use italics to identify his words:

Finally, I wish to debunk some of the misinformation we are fed by the fish and game, DCR or whatever it is called now. For too long, they have been fabricating information about … how the animal could not have been a mountain lion because they misidentified the color. I write not as a hunter or any kind of outdoorsman, but as a professional artist with the requisite training and about 50 years experience. Part of that training includes initial and continued intensive study in color and color theory as well as improvement in observational skills. … It is because of this
training and experience that I know our DCR is either lying to us, doesn’t know how stupid they actually appear or, since most are male, carry the color-blind gene, or perhaps all three. Here’s why:

Animal colors in this area as opposed to the tropics appear to be made up of a color and a tint (white) or shade (black) of that color. Burnt sienna (rust or iron oxide), such as that of a fox, for example, is a dominant color. Add more black and it turns a darker color, such as that of a blue Doberman. Add lots of black and you get a brownish black, such as a black bear.

The base of a rust color is composed of burnt sienna (red) and gold (yellow). A cougar’s color is on the gold side of this base. It appears that the color is generated by mixing the yellowish ochre color with that of its complement, which would generate a neutral gray or muddy brown. The surface of the animal appears to be a coppery-bronze rust color depending on light. However, as one looks inward below the surface toward the skin, it appears to get grayer and more neutral. This can be explained in several ways.The first possible explanation is that the deeper you look, the darker it gets, therefore harder to see color. It might just be that the pigmentation appears only on the very tips of the hair while the rest is the neutral of the color. One might think of this color-changing as perhaps a defensive response that allows the animal to hide in some types of lighting.

Furthermore, color changes with light. For example, take a walk in the woods with the sun at your back and the foliage will appear one color. Turn around and it is completely different. In addition, the sun reflects off the surface in places where the fur is compressed, and is absorbed in others as the animal stretches, creating lighter or darker variations of the same surface. In the animal world, think of the ridgeback, where the light splaying on the texture seems to create a different color along the back, where you look into the fur.

The animal I saw was in and out of the sunlight and at different positions relative to where I was. When I was in a position where the animal faced me or was at an angle in the light, it was a rust/bronze color. But as it moved across my path, I looked directly into the ends of the deep fur and it was gray. This occasionally shows up in photos of the animal and should help explain why there have been different color sightings by various people.

Since most cougars hunt and travel in the poor light of dawn or dusk, the colors of the beast would probably appear to be deep yellow- to grayish-ochre. Seen in front of the light, however, they would appear black. Finally, in any group of similar animals, there will always be variations. That the state uses this color “mix-up” to prove its point and confuse the issue is either innocent ignorance or blatant subterfuge. Take your pick.

So, readers, chew on this analysis whenever contemplating the reason why witnesses dating back to colonial New England have been reporting black or gray panthers. Apparently, it’s all about the light under which they see them. And remember, the preceding explanation came from a man who knows color and the effects of different light on it. That’s why I printed it as it came to me. Frankly, I couldn’t have said it better myself, and may have been inaccurate if I tried to paraphrase.

Why chance it?

A thick envelope sat on my desk when I arrived at work. The paste-on return address told me it had been sent by Kim Richter of Heath, color photo of a cougar on the left. “Uh-oh,” I thought, “here we go again.” The mail, electronic and snail, seems to flow hard every time I write about cougar sightings, be they close or faraway.

For those who missed it, the cougar I wrote about last week was in the east-central New Hampshire town of Barnstead, where someone saw a “mountain lion.” When a state wildlife official responded to the scene, he also saw it or another big cat with his own two eyes. Of course, a New Hampshire Fish & Game Department bigwig immediately doused the story with enough cold water to drown the big-cat, never mind the tale.

Imagine that. Stunning.

Ms. Richter, herself one of many Franklin County residents to report a personal cougar sighting in my weekly column, caught the report and wanted to alert me to black panther sightings that are raising a ruckus around Randolph, Vt., with lots of chatter in The Herald of Randolph. A story with legs and reader interest.

Apparently, our Heath source and her husband have been recently familiarizing themselves with an idyllic new piece of property they purchased in the Randolph area; going to the coffee shops, the general store, chatting, reading papers, listening to local radio, watching local TV, kind of feeling the pulse, the lucky dogs. Where better than Vermont to poke around, acclimate? I too love the Green Mountain State, its people’s gentle way, its liberal politics going all the way back the Ethan Allen and his boys, many of whom had direct connections to this slice of WMass paradise we call home. Too bad we didn’t secede and join the Republic of Vermont as proposed just after the Revolution, when WMass rabble-rousers decided it was time to shake free of the debt-grip being applied by Boston’s mercantile elite. But let us not digress (Long live Dr. Howard Dean! Here’s to you, pinko U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders!), back to panthers, the lower-case black ones; no, not the urban dwellers who attracted police bullets and jail cells the last time hated, liberal, Harvard elites from North of the Mason Dixon Line found their way to the White House and stirred up the dangerous reactionary-right fringe.

Enough! Back to four-legged black panthers.

Who knows what to make of these New England sightings? It’s nothing new. People have reported big black wildcats here dating back to the 17th century. But remember, back then they were also trying and convicting unfortunate souls for witchcraft, hanging Quaker women on Boston Common, banishing dissenters, finding Satan himself in the shadows; ghosts, too. So maybe that was the origin of Puritan-day black panthers, big, black, evil cats possessed by the devil himself. Who knows? Can’t rule it out. Despite sightings up and down the Eastern Seaboard from the Maritimes to Florida, black panthers do not exist here. They’re strictly a Southern Hemisphere phenomenon.

Of course, we have in the past touched on this subject here, examining all the potential reasons for reports of big black wildcats. One theory is that low light might be just right to make a grayish-brown cat wearing its winter coat appear black. Another is that random pet black panthers have been released or escaped. Could be either, I suppose. Then again, who’s to say some early explorers or slave-ship crews didn’t come ashore in South or Central America and acquire a black panther one way or another from an indigenous tribe, caging it in the ship’s hold and bringing it ashore here? Anything’s possible, I guess, and such a case would have probably gone unrecorded.

But let’s not get carried away. Enough of the wild speculation, attempts to explain the unexplainable. All I can say is there have been two credible black panther sightings in central Vermont and the local newspaper is eating it up while state officials distance themselves. So keep your eyes open. Randolph, Vt., ain’t that far north of here. No sir. So Satan himself may soon pass through a mowing near you.

If you happen to see him lurking on the edge, give him a friendly whistle and yell his name. It’s Lucifer.

Well, well, well … fancy that, a Granite State cougar sighting, this one by none other than a New Hampshire Fish and Game Department (NHFG) official responding to a reported — yeeeup, you guessed it — cougar sighting. The way this potentially hot story with legs ran its short, uneventful course underscores the absurdity of “official responses” to 21st century New England cougar sightings.

Our latest Northeastern “mountain lion” tale occurred in Barnstead, N.H., an hour or so east and slightly north of the capital city, Concord. Not surprisingly, New Hampshire Fish and Wildlife spokespeople are saying little, very little, in fact, only that: “Mountain lions are known to exist in the wild in states no closer than Iowa and Florida, so it is not thought to be a dispersing wild animal, but rather is most likely an illegally released pet.”

Hmmmmm? Well, I guess that’s what they always say, ain’t it?

So let’s dig deeper, take a look at this story, and evaluate the official response, one often repeated in recent years; also one that only a fool could accept without scratching his or her head in bewilderment. Think of it. Despite the fact that a wildlife official employed by NHFG responded to a cougar call and actually saw one, the state agency is distancing itself, denying even the remotest possibility that this big cat could be a wild traveler passing through from parts unknown, maybe even seeking a place to settle down. Impossible, they say. Why? Because: “Mountain lions were extirpated from their range in the eastern United States by the late 1800s, with the exception of the endangered Florida panther,” states the NHFG press release to quickly put a lid on the story, one that drew media scrutiny from Boston, Worcester and beyond, places interested in cougar sightings because similar ones have occurred in their own backyards.

It seems wildlife officials, the ones we pay to evaluate such occurrences, want no part of any cougar sighting — zero — always falling back on that same, threadbare escaped-pet theory, which, of course, makes a lot of sense to all of us. We know full well there are pet mountain lions everywhere; next door, around the corner, just down the road, you name it, they’re there. Absolutely. So don’t bury your head in the sand.

Hey, and while we’re at it, did you know mountain lions can make great pets with proper handling? Don’t we all know someone who owns a pet cougar? Haven’t we all seen the bespectacled, little old lady walking her leashed cougar past the house, plastic bag dangling from her free hand, nervously looking at the ground, anywhere but eye-contact with passersby or homeowners trimming the hedges as her feline squats next to the mailbox? Of course. Where have you been? Open your eyes, Dude.

Anyway, NHFG was so determined to stop this latest story dead in its tracks that it promptly marched its top dog, none other than Wildlife Division Chief Steve Weber, to send out the agency smokescreen. “Survival of this type of animal is typically extremely low,” he said in the press release, “as they normally do not have the developed abilities to catch prey on a consistent basis, and/or may have been de-clawed. If the animal does survive, we would expect to collect hard evidence of its existence in the form of a pictures, tracks, scat and/or DNA evidence.”

Before we proceed, let us not forget that before the turn of the 21st century, just such DNA evidence was discovered at the Quabbin. That tell-tale site included a buried beaver carcass and lots of wildcat scat, which was professionally collected, then analyzed by two nationally known labs. The analysis revealed Eastern cougar DNA; you know, the same species press releases keep telling us was “extirpated more than a century ago in these parts.”

The Quabbin case is the only “indisputable” evidence thus far uncovered to prove cougar presence here. But there is other “pretty convincing” evidence, including the most recent. Another was the two Acton cops who saw a cougar with their own eyes and documented it in separate police reports after responding to a late-night cougar complaint. How could it be clearer that no matter who sees a cougar, the official word is going to be a pathetic denial that it couldn’t possibly have been one; or, better still, if it was indeed a cougar, then it wasn’t wild?

For anyone unfamiliar with the many other cougar sightings I’ve chronicled over the years, they’re all right here, all of them occurring over the past five years. And do you know what? There were many concurrent reports I didn’t write about for one reason or another.

If all these sightings and official denials don’t stir your curiosity, or maybe even make you a tad suspicious, then it’s time to disconnect the feeding tube … pronto.