After three reported sightings in New Canaan last summer, police last weekend received yet another a report of a mountain lion sighting in the southeast corner of town.
The March 13 sighting, in the area of Old Rock Lane and White Oak Shade Road, just below the Merritt Parkway, appears to be credible, according to Animal Control Officer Allyson Halm.
A New Canaan woman walking in the area saw the animal cross the street around Brookside Road and told police that it wasn’t a bobcat or coyote, Halm said.
The woman who saw the animal was not able to capture a photo, Halm said.
“She panicked a bit and froze,” Halm said, citing details from her conversation with the local woman on March 14.
Halm has urged residents to be prepared with air horns to haze any predatory animal and recommended that those who have seen mountain lions to contact the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection directly.
Last July, a man told Halm that he’d seen a mountain lion pass in front of him while jogging on Hoyt Farms Road. The following month, two more reports of sightings came in from White Oak Shade Lane and Gerdes Road.
Mountain lions have traveled through Fairfield County in the past. In New Canaan, residents reported seeing mountain lions in 2016 and in 2018.
Also known as ‘cougars’ or ‘pumas,’ mountain lions are reclusive creatures that feed mainly on deer, raccoons, rodents and various small mammals, experts say. Eleven years ago, a mountain lion made regional headlines after it was photographed in Greenwich and later struck and killed by a motor vehicle on the parkway in Milford—a young male that DEEP officials determined through DNA evidence had traveled east all the way from South Dakota. That’s a distance of more than 1,500 miles—one of the longest journeys ever recorded of a land mammal in North America, and more than twice the distance ever recorded for a dispersing mountain lion.
According to the Mountain Lion Foundation, a nonprofit conservation and education organization, the animals seek to avoid humans, though unprotected pets can make for easy prey.