Wow! Imagine that. The cougar killed more than a month ago on a Milford, Conn., highway was wild, not the escaped or released pet the experts were praying for.

Yes, the road-killed cat was wild indeed, had traveled all the way from South Dakota’s Black Hills, no journey for lightweights. So mark my words, admittedly those of a flunky with no shiny, gilt-framed degrees hanging above my desk: There have been other passers-through in the past and more will come in the future. Don’t doubt it for a second. See you later escaped-pet, misidentification and LSD-flashback theorists. Your argument no longer holds water. In fact, if a cougar can make it into the evening shadow of New York City in coastal Connecticut, what part of the Northeast is off-limits?

I’m sure hundreds of people who heard or read the news Wednesday morning felt vindicated. These folks had the courage to report cougar sightings only to be ridiculed by state and federal wildlife experts. The experts claimed the witnesses were sadly mistaken, even going so far as to accuse woodsmen and police officers alike of mistaking large house cats for cougars when traveling through deceptive lighting. Yeah, right! How would you like to be accused of such a thing after seeing a cougar?

When I reported regional sightings in print — about 50 this decade — I was called irresponsible by some and snickered at by others who said I must have run out of subject matter for my column. Either that or I was trying to stir something up to sell papers. Well, that was far from the truth. All I did was listen, believe what I heard and report it without hesitation. It seemed to me foolish to deny even a remote possibility that a predator that was historically here and still exists in the West could return with reforestation of our hills and dales over the past 150 years. But, no, the experts scolded, it could not and would not happen. Well, it’s happened, so now what do they have to say?

Do you suppose the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) regrets classifying the Eastern cougar extinct back in March? Can the agency possibly stick to it, especially when, in fact, the eastern and western cougars are and always have been the same cat? What should have been said was that the North American cougar no longer populates the eastern United States. Even that assessment would have been wrong, because young western male cats have been dispersing eastward for years now, with breeding populations also creeping eastward into Midwestern states where they vanished a century or more ago.

I must say I was surprised when even high-ranking Cougar Rewildling Foundation officials I contacted after the road-kill dismissed the possibility that the Connecticut cat was wild, despite the fact that a thorough surface examination of the carcass showed no obvious signs it had been a captive. No tattoos, not neutered or declawed, lean and mean. Both sources were sure testing would reveal that the cat had been held in captivity and either escaped or was released. Perhaps when the next big cat shows up they’ll reserve judgment and say it could well be a wayward male “disperser;” that is a young male searching for territory and females after being forced eastward by dominant western males.

Something else I found amusing Tuesday while reading through press releases and news reports was a semantics game authorities were playing. Having already classified Eastern cougars extinct earlier this year, they were careful not to use the word cougar once, choosing this time to call the animal a mountain lion. Although both names fit (so do puma and panther), there was no mention of mountain lions in the extinction press release or news reports. They then called the animal a cougar. Maybe I shouldn’t admit it but I abused my editorial power and cast aside my journalistic integrity Tuesday night by executing a simple search-and-replace throughout the AP story we ran, replacing mountain lion with cougar. Just a little touche, I guess. Fun and games. If they can do it, why can’t I?

Throughout my days of writing about local cougar sightings, the doubters have all said that if big cats were here, then they’d show up dead on the highway or alive and well on a hunter’s trail camera. Well, we’ve now had our first road kill. Likely a snapshot is not far off, if there isn’t another road kill first. My guess is there’ll be more proof that dispersers pass through the Northeast. The question is, how long before a wayward female follows?

Impossible?

Yeah, yeah, that’s precisely what the authorities will say.

Not me. My motto is never say never. It’s worked so far.