A doorbell security camera installed at a home in Rochester, New York shows what appears to be a mountain lion walking through a residential area in the middle of the night. But here’s the rub: Mountain lions don’t live in New York, and they haven’t since the late 1800s. The sighting last week had the neighborhood up in arms, and the local police department even briefly enacted a shelter-in-place order, which has since lifted.
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According to New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), eastern cougars have been absent from the state since the late 1800s. However, the DEC concedes that there have been a few isolated sightings of mountain lions that weren’t native to the state.
“A couple of sightings involved captive mountain lions that escaped from licensed facilities in New York State,” the DEC states on its website. “Another sighting involved a wild cougar that traveled through New York as it trekked nearly 1,800 miles east from its native population in South Dakota.”
Officials haven’t caught the animal yet, although many people have reported sightings.
[RELATED: WATCH: Mountain Lion Stares Down Roofer in Insane Encounter]
“Attention Facebook friends, last night around 4 in the morning my ring camera got a large cat on the top left corner of the video in the beginning, it doesn’t look like a dog or a normal cat but it looks like a wild cat, maybe a mountain [lion] or a tiger?” wrote Stephany Baez in her Facebook post sharing the doorbell-cam video. “But if you live in the city near culver and east main make sure your outside pets are inside.”
See the suspected mountain lion in New York here:
Here’s a local news report about the mystery wild cat:
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