When The Big Cat Came To Easton

It was March 1993, and my sister was in Chicago in her apartment watching the local TV news, and there on the screen was an image of Main Street in North Easton.

Suzy says she was a bit perplexed. 

And the news anchor, laughing, says something like, “And there is a mountain lion in Massachusetts.”

Yes, the famous Easton Mountain Lion.      

While writing my May 27 “Muscato’s Musings” column – titled "Wild Easton" – which is about the return to Easton of various species of wild animals, I thought about our Big Cat and its stay here.

What a ride.

Not just Easton, but the entire South Shore, was excited about – and a bit afraid of – this creature roaming the suburbs.   Rumors abounded, and a gentle hysteria washed through our population. 

There was a time when mountain lions, a type of large wild cat which is also called a cougar or puma or panther or catamount, could be found in northern New England.  (Indeed the University of Vermont sports teams mascot is the Catamount.)   But the mountain lion was almost totally gone from the region by the mid 1800s – even if occasional sightings still are reported in New Hampshire and Vermont. 

Yet it seems that a mountain lion appeared in these parts a little more than 18 years ago.  

Here is an excerpt from a March 30, 1993 Boston Globe story, by Mike Tougias:

The Big Cat rumors began to swirl on the 12th of this month, when an Easton woman told police she had seen a mountain lion in her back yard.

Then a patron of Charlie's Restaurant on Main Street said he saw it in the parking lot, rummaging through a dumpster. A local butcher said he caught a glimpse of its tail as it headed toward a railroad bed. There were reports of mauled ducks in Mansfield, missing chickens in Stoughton, an influx of frightened deer at Stonehill College. The Easton police began getting as many as 100 lion-related calls a day, with sightings of tracks reported as far away as Sherborn.

Now an Easton doctor has provided authorities with hard evidence that this town's mysterious new celebrity truly exists: an eight-minute videotape of a mountain lion in all its glory, licking its paws, wandering around the doctor's yard, then disappearing into the woods.

"It's real all right," said Sgt. of the Easton police, who said he responded to the original report of a lion sighting more than two weeks ago. "I was beginning to wonder."

In the comments section following my "" column, an Easton Patch user, who goes by the screenname "Tom B", made this post:

I remember in the early 90's when the mountain lion came around. My family lived on Elm Street and our chicken coop was raided by the said mountain lion. There was snow on the ground and we cut out the paw prints and put them in our freezer in the basement. Word got around and soon enough my mother was interviewed by some news station. Also, Myself and another kid while at NEG [North Easton Grammar School] got pulled out of class to be interviewed by the Enterprise.

The media most certainly descended on our fair community.   It was wild, literally and figuratively. 

At the time, my brother owned a Honey Dew Donut shop on the land where is now at Five Corners.   I was in the shop one morning, talking with some people, and a newspaper reporter showed up to ask us questions and get our opinion of the cat. 

A young woman, who worked at the shop, said she would run fast if she saw it.   Curiously, yet fittingly, Russell Hill, who grew up in the rustic environs of Furnace Village, said that if he saw the big cat he would offer the animal a steak. 

I was walking on Pammy’s Path one day during the Big Cat episode, and a gentleman was standing in front of his house.  He told me he had just heard a big growl, like that a lion would emit.  He had called the police. 

Within a minute or two, a cruiser arrived.   An officer got out and took down information.

Does a mountain lion – which can span nine feet from nose to tail and weigh more than 200 lbs.  – pose any danger to people?  Yes, but a very small one; the chances are almost nil that a mountain lion would attack a person – although it most certainly does happen.  Mountain lions are scared of humans. 

No unprotected pet or livestock would be safe though. 

How did the mountain lion make it to Easton?

The best bet is that someone in the area illegally kept the animal as a pet – and when it got too difficult to take care of – perhaps it got too big – then the cat was released into the wild nearby.

Alas, by late April the sightings and reports of the Big Cat in Easton and local towns had just about ended.   The giant feline, for whatever reason, was not around anymore. 

On May 1, 1993 – about six weeks after the initial mountain lion sighting – the decapitated carcass of a 30 to 35-lb. African wildcat, probably a serval, was found in Easton in a field just off of Rte. 138 near the Easton-Rayham line. 

Yet Easton police did not think the remains were those of the Big Cat that had caused so much commotion.  The animal may have been acquired illegally, and then killed, and the head taken for taxidermy purposes. 

So what happened to the Big Cat?  Where did it go?

These questions may never be answered. 

But how appropriate, and poetic, that when the Big Cat showed up in Massachusetts, it traveled to Easton, the home of , the home of the Tigers.