I saw this hoax in my local paper.
Some people believed it. The newspaper was skeptical. And rightly so.
The hoax says that this cougar was killed in West Virginia– somewhere between Grantsville (my area) and Walker (a small town near Parkersburg).
If there are cougars in this area, they are going to be very smart and cautious animals. People have guns and will kill them. It doesn’t matter whether the species has any state or federal protection here. If someone sees it, it will be shot.
So why would one of these alleged Eastern cougars wander out onto the highway and get hit by a car?
Secondly, the hoax said that some officials from “Fish and Game” came out and put the poor cat out its misery. We have no such department in West Virginia; it is the DNR that handles all of these things. In fact, if it had just been a deer or other mundane roadkill, the Department of Highways would be called.
Thirdly, Walker and Grantsville are some distance apart. I think that if I really wanted to do a hoax, I would say it was killed between Grantsville and Elizabeth, Grantsville and Glenville, or Grantsville and Smithville. To me those would be more logical places to say that a great cat cross the road. But I digress. Some hoaxers don’t do their homework.
The truth about the hoax can be found here. It turns out that the cougar died on the highway. It was on Highway 64– no, not I-64, which runs through West Virginia. It was hit by a car in Arizona. The cat was mortally wounded, so someone from Arizona’s Fish and Game Department came out and dispatched the poor creature.
The cat was a big tom. It was estimated to be 7 feet long and over 200 pounds.
Now, someone snapped some photos of the cat. Then the photos were sent along in e-mails. Someone with a sense of humor sent one of the photos along claiming that the cat was killed near Prescott, where lots of people live. As the photos got forwarded, someone decided to sent the photos along with the story that they had been killed in Arkansas. Then someone forwarded them with the crazy story about the cat being killed in rural West Virginia.
If the cats are still in West Virginia, they are going to be very wary creatures. Further, a large number of sightings are going to be misidentifications. Bobcats, both species of fox, domestic cats (like Abyssinians) and certain breed of dog look a bit like cougars. In fact, it is thought that a lot of cougar sightings are actually dark-colored golden retrievers, which, I have to say, do look like the cats if you just see their long-tailed bodies running away at a distance.
cougars do still prowl in west virginia. i do agree that it is very unlikely one would be hit by a car, because in most cases they stay in the high mountains. i actually hasve a friend who was in her kitchen when a cougar came out of the woods and killed one of the goats in her farm. like you said, a gun was retrieved, but the cat was gone before it could be shot. other than that i only know of a couple cougar sightings, but that one was most fresh in my mind. i have also talked to forest rangers who have told me they do live in west virginia. some people, though, think we hae panters. i do disagrees on this, believing people just mistook a cougar, or mountain lion, for a panther. i am pretty sure cougars are in west virginia. i have yet to see one, but someday i hopefully will. (: