Chapel Hill woman says she spotted a cougar

CHAPEL HILL -- A Chapel Hill woman says she looked outside a window of her house last week and saw a mountain lion.

Linda Janssen said she was having coffee with her nephew, a 22-year-old Army private visiting for Thanksgiving, when they looked out her kitchen window Friday morning. Janssen's property on Pinehurst Drive backs up to Bolin Creek, which flows into waters feeding Jordan Lake.

"It was big," she said. "We were just so stunned."

Janssen said they saw the animal, as big as her 75-pound black Lab, in profile and face-on, and saw it leap over a tree trunk. They watched the big cat for about a minute and a half.

"It wasn't a bobcat; it didn't have that shape," Janssen said. "It was sleek, like a [Lincoln Mercury] car commercial."

"It was an absolutely beautiful animal."

Eastern cougars once ranged from eastern Canada to South Carolina. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the subspecies on the list of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in 1973.

The Endangered Species Act requires reviewing all species on the list every five years, and the Fish and Wildlife Service is beginning to review new information to determine the cougar's status. Limited resources and higher priorities delayed the review until now, according to the agency's Web site.

Bob Marotto, director of Orange County Animal Services, said his department had received no reports of a cougar sighting.

"I would be surprised, but I'd never rule anything out," he said.

But Janssen's nephew, Sean Gilbert of Corpus Christi, Texas, says he knows what he saw.

"If that had been back in Texas, I would have shot it," Gilbert said. "I know that sounds a little barbaric. I would have had it shot and mounted. In Texas, that's a trophy."