Here I go again, chasing ghosts, some tan, others darker, all with long, sloping tails bowed to the ground. Many credible sources claim to have seen these creatures in the area. Experts say they’re mistaken. So who do you believe — the credentialed ones who say cougars are extinct but can’t prove it, or honest citizens who report seeing them? It’s a quandary. Flip a coin. That’s about where we now sit.

More fuel for the fire was mailed to me by reader Bernice Brooks of Leyden. She clipped a Feb 15 “USA Today” article and sent it along thinking it may be of interest. The headline read “Central USA seeing mountain lion migrations: States long devoid of cougars find evidence of cats coming to stay.” The story discussed recent cougar migration to Midwestern states where they disappeared a century or more ago, at least that’s the official line. We’re talking about states like Nebraska, Arkansas, Illinois and Wisconsin; another not mentioned in the article but included in similar discussions is Michigan, where cougar sightings have increased dramatically over the past decade in remote Great Lakes country. So, the simple question is this: If the experts now agree that cougars are re-established within a day’s drive, why not here? Why not in the Adirondacks, the Greens, the Whites? Why not in the Poconos? It’s a question the most outspoken “ghost busters” don’t want to entertain, never mind attempt to answer. But the fact remains that, similar to here, witnesses in the five aforementioned Midwestern states had for years been reporting cougar sightings to a chorus of ridicule from experts, credentialed and otherwise. You know the line: “Another cougar sighting? What was he or she smoking? Ha-ha-ha.” Well, apparently the laughter has quieted in the heartland, where the same experts who 10 years ago denied the validity of cougar sightings now say there is indeed a resident cougar population. Sound familiar? It should. The same thing happened a generation ago in Florida, where people reported panther sightings and were informed by wildlife officials that it was impossible, Florida Panthers were extinct. They’re singing a different tune today, with a viable, reproductive panther population lurking in Sunshine State swamps.

Imagine that. Florida panthers weren’t extinct after all. Hmmm? Wonder why they insisted they were, why they refused to admit even the most remote possibility they were back? I guess they’d have to answer that. Now a similar scenario in the Midwest, where the well-intentioned fellas with patches on their shirts admit big cats back. At first they identified confirmed sightings as escaped exotic pets, then young, wayward males displaced by territorial adults in the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming. And who’s to say that wasn’t the case. But now the explanation’s changed. Wayward females have entered the formula as well, and we all know what comes next. Yep, you’ve guessed it … kittens, like the immature cougar spotted 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee and confirmed by DNA testing to be a cougar. So it looks like what’s happening there is exactly what the experts said could not happen there, in Florida a generation earlier, or in the Northeast now. And do you want to hear a good one? There’s information “out there” that experts aren’t even sure Eastern and Western cougars are different species, perhaps only a variation of the same.

All I can say is this: Believe what you want but be very careful what you say in public, who you criticize, how adamant you are in your opposition, because your day of reckoning could be near. And when that day arrives and these sightings can no longer be dismissed as escaped pets, LSD flashbacks or delusions, the experts with the gilt-framed degrees hanging behind their desks will have some explaining to do. Lights, camera, action, it’ll be there on the 6 o’clock news, in print, on-line. Backpedaling experts will be scurrying to defend their earlier opinions, stuttering, stammering, excuse after excuse, in disbelief that the information they pulled out of a book somewhere was wrong. It’ll be pure entertainment for me and other idiots. Comic relief.

There is a way for the fellas to escape this potential future indignity. Seems pretty simple from this perch. All they have to do is admit they can’t be certain Eastern cougars were ever extinct.

That way, they’re covered.