Town pounces on lion tales
ACTON -- Along the winding drives, in community e-mails and neighbors' conversations, this town is all abuzz about what police and some residents are calling a mountain lion in their midst.
Parents keep an eye on children playing outside. Dogs are leashed. Cats are confined indoors. And recess monitors at C.T. Douglas Elementary School stand with their backs to the adjacent marsh, their eyes on the pupils, for fear of the cougar.
Four sightings have been reported over the past nine days: Nov. 3 -- large cat reported on Henley Road. Nov. 8 -- residents of Mohawk Drive report growling outside their homes; police respond and report seeing a lion (a tan, muscular cat about 5 to 6 feet long). Nov. 9 -- paw prints found behind Idylwilde Farms. Nov. 10 -- Central Street resident reports seeing the cat.
But wildlife biologists, here and across the nation, are skeptical.
They point out that most reported sightings of mountain lions in suburbia turn out to be large dogs or coyotes and that there is no true proof (no pictures or even poop). The last confirmed sighting of a mountain lion in Massachusetts was in Hampshire County, circa 1858, according to the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
In cougar-rich California, fish and wildlife officials say that 60 percent of reported sightings are erroneous. The most popular culprit mistaken for a mountain lion is the golden retriever.
Recently, California Department of Fish and Game officials shot a 15-pound Abyssinian house cat, thinking it was a lion, said Lynn Sadler, executive director of the Mountain Lion Foundation in Sacramento.
"One of the scientists here often jokes that he's some day going to go to an area where he is certain there are no mountain lions, tell someone he saw one, and count the days before it appears in the press," she said.
Don't say that to Colleen DiPietro, 34, of Mohawk Drive. She is certain that she heard a mountain lion outside her home about 1:30 a.m. Monday.
Sound asleep, she and her husband, Dan, were awoken by what she described as "a growling outside."
"It's definitely a cat," she said yesterday. "I have no doubt."
She called police, who said they spotted it two doors down.
Earlier in the evening, Ellen Schemer, 43, who lives across from DiPietro, said her husband heard what sounded like an animal running rapidly outside their house.
"He said it was unlike any other sound he'd ever heard," she said. "Now, I'm just being extra super-aware of my surroundings."
Such sightings are reported much more frequently than people think, said David Baron of Boston, author of "The Beast in the Garden," a book about mountain lions in Boulder, Colo., in the 1980s.
"Once or twice a week, there's a flurry of sightings, and another town is on edge, somewhere in the East, because people claim there's a lion on the loose," he said yesterday, mentioning earlier sightings in Beverly and Manchester-by-the-Sea. "These sorts of lion scares occur with stunning frequency, and it's impossible to prove the negative. People are quite adamant about what they've seen. And can I say with 100 percent that there is no lion in Acton? I can't."
The possibility does exist. Mountain lions kept as pets or part of "canned hunts" could have escaped or been set free. Baron also pointed out that the mountain lion population in the West is migrating eastward. Once thought to be devoid of mountain lions, Iowa now officially has them. A lion recently struck by train in Oklahoma was found to have been either radio-collared or tagged in the
"I think they're going to get to New England, but I don't think they're here yet," Baron said.
Some Acton residents are not taking chances.
Earlier this week, students on Mohawk Drive were being driven to their bus stops, 20 seconds away.
"Now we're a bit more careful," said Wendy Wildes, 38, as she raked leaves in her front yard on Nashoba Road.
She acknowledged recently driving to her mailbox, about a two-second trip. A mothers group to which she belongs recently dubbed the town "Mutual of Acton's Wild Kingdom."
Judy Reiter, 53, a librarian in Boxborough, has stopped walking in local conservation areas, something she once did daily. "I think people are just being cautious," she said.
All the reported sightings have occurred along the line between Acton and Boxborough, in an area with new houses being built.
The Acton Police Department, which had no one available to comment yesterday, has warned residents to stay indoors, close garbage cans tightly, and keep pets inside.
Shortly after officers said they saw a lion on Mohawk Drive on Monday, two huge highway signs were erected on Central Street with the message: "Use caution. Mountain lion sighted." The signs were gone yesterday.
After a state biologist raised doubts about footprints being found, police stood their ground.
"He can be as skeptical as he wants," Police Chief Frank J. Widmayer III recently told The Beacon, a newspaper in Acton. "As far as I'm concerned, if my officers saw it, it's written in stone."
Sadler, of the Mountain Lion Foundation, declined to speculate about the local scare, saying it benefits neither the lions nor the people who believe so strongly that the animals walk in their backyards.
"People want it to be there," she said.
"Even if they are frightened or concerned, it's something exciting. People want to have this amazing thing be there."
Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com.
