Michael Morrissey, an officer with the Department of Environmental Management, agreed. After looking at the eight-inch tracks, he wrote in his report that they seemed to originate from ``a large cat, larger than a bobcat.'' And the large cat that best fits Supinski's description -- since a typical bobcat or lynx weighs less than 30 pounds -- is the Eastern mountain lion, according to a DEM book on Rhode Island mammals. ``I think at first they thought I had a screw loose,'' said Supinski, a church sexton who lives with his family on Ridge Road. But when Morrissey saw the tracks, which were clearly defined in the frozen dirt near the trash cans, Supinski said he became visibly excited.
DEM officials aren't willing to confirm that what Supinski saw was a mountain lion, but they concede that the evidence is compelling. ``To have one of our officers go in and see tracks like that is very intriguing,'' said Lt. Peter Bissell, of the DEM Enforcement Division. Bissell thinks the chances of a mountain lion in Rhode Island are remote, but he said that he also felt that way about moose and bear sightings that turned out to be accurate. ``Anything's possible,'' he said.
Mountain lions have not been documented in Rhode Island for 150 years. Accounts of sightings, however, are increasingly common throughout New England. Six months ago, the DEM received several calls reporting lion sightings in Cranston. Though these calls were never substantiated, Bissell said the DEM took the reports seriously, investigating and setting out scent posts to track the animal.
``We never found tracks like these in Cranston,'' he said. ``We're interested. With snow like this it would be great; we could really home in on something. We'd certainly like to see what's out there.'' If this is indeed a mountain lion, chances are it's an escaped illegal pet and not a wild cougar that migrated far from its natural home, Bissell said. ``It would really be a needle in a haystack if an animal like that were loose. It could return to its owner, and then we'll never hear anything more about it,'' he said.
Bissell said it would be difficult but not impossible for a mountain lion to survive in the woods of Smithfield. ``One of their prime sources of food is deer, and Lord knows we have enough of those out here,'' he said. ``More deer than in the habitats out West where they're actually propagating.''
Bruce Clark, director of the Roger Williams Park Zoo, said the fact that the animal was going through Supinski's trash leads him to believe it was domesticated. He said wild mountain lions are carnivores that will seldom eat anything unless it is freshly killed. Clark added that although mountain lions are potentially formidable, humans generally don't have much to fear. A fleeting glimpse would be a typical mountain lion encounter, he said. People who do think they see a lion should not approach it, Clark advised. ``Face the animal and back away slowly. Don't turn and run,'' he said.
Mountain lions, also known as cougars, pumas or catamounts, are large, brownish cats that generally weigh between 100 and 200 pounds. Three hundred years ago they roamed freely throughout all of North America, but early settlers saw them as a risk and killed them off. Today mountain lions are found mostly in the West and some regions of southern Florida. Since the 1800s, there have been a handful of documented cougar sightings in New England. The most recent proven sighting in Rhode Island occurred when a lion was killed in West Greenwich in 1847 or 1848. Its remains are kept at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Just because sightings have not been proven does not mean Eastern mountain lions do not exist, said Marilyn Massaro, a curator at the Museum of Natural History in Roger Williams Park. Since mountain lions tend to avoid humans and settled areas, sightings are extremely rare and even more difficult to prove, she said. ``Eastern mountain lions are extirpated from the area, not extinct,'' Massaro said. ``Extinct means forever. Extirpated means they no longer occur in a given area. Extripated means they could come back.''
Mountain Lion Observed Again in Rhode Island
SMITHFIELD -- Ronald Supinski knows what he saw. He says he got a very clear look at the tawny-coated cat, larger than his 80-pound German shepherd and with a tail as long as his armspan, rummaging through trash barrels in his front yard on Dec. 16. As he raced toward it, he said, it leaped across his entire front yard in just two bounds. ``I called DEM, and right away they're telling me it's a bobcat. But I know what bobcats look like, and this was no bobcat,'' said Supinski.
