Reported cougar sighting near Canterbury dismissed as 'clearly a housecat'
CBC
Another New Brunswicker has come forward with "evidence" of an eastern cougar, but animal experts who reviewed his images are dismissing it as a much smaller and more common feline.
"This is clearly a house cat," said Donald McAlpine, head of the natural history section of the New Brunswick Museum, curator of research and head of the museum's zoology section.
"To me, it looks like a domestic cat with the long, striped tail and thin legs," said Pam Novak of the Atlantic Wildlife Institute.
McAlpine and Novak were shown images that Saint Johner Rick Boucher said he captured in September and August in Canterbury, a rural village in southwestern New Brunswick.
Boucher said the animal he first saw near his girlfriend's place in the middle of the day last July was four to five feet long.
"It was brown and ... the hide on it had that real sleek appearance."
"When he jumped I could see the whole body stretch out and the long tail behind him."
He said the pictures he later got on a trail camera showed striped tail markings that are characteristic of cougars under a year old.
According to the zoologist, however, the markings in the photos do not match a cougar's.
"The body should be heavily spotted. …The top of the tail … should show a heavy stripe, as well as the fainter rings," said McAlpine.
Additionally, the head is too small, he said.
"The proportions are off for a cougar kitten."
Boucher was not dissuaded.
The avid outdoorsman and retired power engineer for Horizon Health has been on a mission to prove the existence of cougars in the province since 1970.