Jones said a woman reported a mountain lion chased her as she rode away on a bicycle in a semi-rural area near Austin. "It’s not a mountain lion."Īlso this spring, TPWD Game Warden Arlen "Turk" Jones handled a report of another supposed mountain lion sighting. "That’s a feral cat, maybe about 18 inches tall," he said. Closer inspection proved otherwise.ĭavis, TPWD conservation outreach coordinator and a former urban wildlife biologist, examined the size of a prickly-pear pad next to the cat in the photograph and used it as a scale to measure the animal’s size. The man who sent the grainy mobile phone photo said the animal was a large cat, prompting some people to speculate it was the latest in a rash of supposed mountain lion sightings in urban areas. In one incident this spring, TPWD’s John Davis pulled up a photograph on his computer that someone had taken in a neighborhood north of Austin showing an animal’s tail barely visible behind a cedar tree. “It’d be one thing if we saw them frequently but we see them rarely.Most Mountain Lion ‘Sightings’ In Texas UnreliableĪUSTIN, Texas - Most reports of mountain lion sightings in Texas are never verified with physical evidence, although such reports can arouse fear and cause a local publicity stir, according to wildlife experts with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “There’s no point in trying to capture him and relocate him given the fact that they travel 40-80 miles,” she said. “I think they should just leave him alone,” Higgins told the newspaper. Higgins told the Morning News she did not want to share the property address because she did not want curiosity seekers or hunters trying to track down the mountain lion. “The video appears to be legitimate, and the tracks were found in close proximity,” he said. “I’m about as convinced as I can be without seeing the cat myself,” Jackson told the Morning News. A bobcat’s tail is normally 6 inches long and does not touch the ground. Mountain lions are often confused with bobcats, but they are much larger and have long tails that touch the ground. Jackson said he shared his photos with a tracking expert, who verified the prints, the newspaper reported. “One key thing to keep in mind is mountain lions are a component of the natural landscape in many parts of Texas, and unless they are in what we would consider a no-tolerance zone such as near a school, or if the lion exhibited threatening behavior, then there’s really no action they would consider taking,” Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson Megan Radke said in a statement.Ĭhris Jackson, who runs a website and Facebook page called DFW Urban Wildlife, confirmed that he inspected the mountain lion’s tracks, finding them “in soft wet sand just south of where the videos of the cat were recorded,” the Morning News reported. She says, ‘Huh?’ I said there’s a mountain lion in my backyard.”īiologists said they suspected this mountain lion was most likely a transient juvenile seeking a home range, KXAS reported. Humphrey said she told the dispatcher, “I’m sitting in my car and there is a mountain lion in my backyard. Humphrey said she immediately called the police. “Then it turned into shock, and then it turned into fear.”