GREECE, N.Y. – The search for the alleged Rochester mountain lion may be expanding to Greece after two separate witnesses reported seeing what they believe to be the big cat – just blocks from each other.
“We came down off of North Ave. coming onto Northbridge Dr. here… And all of a sudden, this mass lit up under this light here you could see this big, long, elongated creature, looking like a lion,” said Nicole Scanlon.
Scanlon says she and her daughter, Brook Spina, saw what they believe to be a mountain lion just before 10 p.m. Monday night.
“And it took two leaps over from this creek going this way and went down the embankment,” Scanlon said, gesturing across Northbridge Dr. near a culvert.
“I saw like the tail and stuff. And it was like long. It was crazy,” said Brook Spina, Scanlon’s daughter.
Less than half a mile away, also along the same waterway of Larkin Creek, neighbor Caitlin Castronovo says she saw a similar creature over a month ago and even found scat in her yard.
“It went so fast I didn’t even know what I saw. I told my husband, I was like, ‘I think that looks like a mountain lion,'” said Castronovo, who connected with Scanlon after the latter posted about the alleged sighting on Monday and supported her sighting.
Tom Kowalski, News10NBC: “You’re still even a skeptic yourself. Like you’re not even sure that you saw anything, right?”
Caitlin Castronovo: “If I didn’t have the animal droppings to like pair with it and then the other sighting [from Scanlon], I guess I’m a little less skeptical because of it.”
Wildlife expert Brad Gibson, a professor of environmental sustainability and former wildlife ecologist, says the scat found matches the visual description of a mountain lion’s.
“We’re looking for hallmarks of what mountain lion scat would be. The first thing we’re going to look for is fur in the scat itself because it’s eating wild animals,” Gibson said.
As for how the mountain lion could have made its way from Rochester to Greece, Gibson says it’s well within the range of the animal.
“The initial sightings were in the city of Rochester, and then the ones up in Greece are, what, 10 or so miles away, approximately 12 miles away. That’s well within the range of a mountain lion,” he said.
Tom Kowalski: “Why do you think it would be sticking around the Rochester area?”
Brad Gibson: “A mountain lion sticking around the Rochester area doesn’t really make sense on the surface. However, dispersing male mountain lions can go to great distances looking for new territory and mates. This lion may not know there are no mates in this area. So what it’s doing is looking for areas to hide, cover and also, of course prey. So what do we have in the Rochester suburbs? There are young fawns in the summer season also. Easy prey choice. So when we’re looking at the area it is in, it needs cover, which it probably has, and it needs prey, which it certainly has.”
Gibson added the lion may be moving at night and using sparsely populated areas like the Genesee River and train tracks to travel without being seen.
News10NBC has reached out to Greece Police and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation but has not heard back from Greece at this time.
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Is the Rochester mountain lion now in Greece? Two witnesses spot big cat near Larkin Creek WHEC.com.
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