A Briscoe Road woman on Monday saw a mountain lion while walking her dog, in what New Canaan Police are classifying as a credible cougar sighting, the third of 2018.
Officer Allyson Halm, head of the New Canaan Police Department’s Animal Control section, called for residents in the area of Briscoe and North Wilton Roads to check surveillance video for images of the animal.
“We have had enough sightings that we believe are credible and people just need to always be alert,” Halm said. “We do live in the woods. Everyone needs to be prepared to see a bear, to see a mountain lion, always. We can’t let our guard down. We don’t need to panic but we have to be smart when we are out there.”
The sighting, by Margaret Cooper, follows one in April on Marvin Ridge Road and another in January on Nursery Road.
Cooper said the mountain lion emerged about 20 to 30 yards away, from a property across the street from her home.
About 3.5 to four feet tall, auburn in color with a long tail, high hindquarters and the head and gait of a cat—all telltale signs of mountain lions, as opposed to bobcats—the cougar “just sauntered across the road and never looked in our direction,” Cooper told NewCanaanite.com.
“It didn’t seem to pay any attention to us at all,” she said.
Cooper added: “I never in my wildest dreams expected to see one in my own neighborhood. it just sauntered across the road, onto our property and then disappeared into the trees.”
She did not take a picture of the animal.
Mountain lions have been known to travel through Fairfield County in the past. Two years ago, a woman claimed to see a mountain lion on a Fox Run Road property in New Canaan, though state officials said they were unable to confirm the sighting based on paw prints left by the animal.