First Malcolm Northram saw what he thought was a cougar outside his bedroom window. Then Lynn Eccleston saw what resembled cougar tracks. She had seen them twice before this week, and her husband, Harold Wegner, has seen them as well. They were waiting for more snow to see if the "cat" was still around.
Sure enough, when it snowed this week, Eccleston found tracks not only in her yard, but in Northram's yard as well. At this point, nobody has clearly identified what this animal is. The only sighting was by Northram in the beginning of December.
"I woke up at 3 a.m., and when I looked outside, I noticed a shadow in the tree," he said. "It started to move and I was thinking that my eyes were playing a trick on me, but whatever I saw it was very large and it was very high up in the tree. It was some kind of feline and it was obviously not a housecat."
Eccleston said that the tracks she found this week were very large and very far apart, supporting the theory that something large is roaming around. Both Northram and Eccleston and Wegner live in the Tauxemont area. Nobody has seen any carnage, but it is fairly heavily wooded in that area, so it is possible that the animal could be hiding whatever it is eating.
Several years ago, there were several reports of a big cat sighting in the Tysons Corner area. A website has also been set up by the Eastern Cougar Foundation; it maps numerous sightings that have been reported around the Middle Atlantic Region.