"It weighs 200 pounds, is covered with hair, lives in the mountains, screams like a woman and may be stalking in Crozet.

Recent sightings of what some believe to be a mountain lion in the rural community have some residents worried for their safety, others excited about the big cats returning and state wildlife authorities hoping to find tangible evidence that such a wild cat exists in Virginia.

Residents have reported the tawny-colored cats stalking in backyards, hay fields and riverbanks. Some believe the animals have scratched at windows and pilfered their dog’s food, but state game officials are skeptical. Evidence of the cats in Virginia - alternatively called cougars, pumas, catamounts and panthers - has been rare to nonexistent for more than 100 years.

“We don’t think we have any wild populations of cougars in Virginia, but I would never tell someone that they didn’t see what they thought they saw, because it has happened,” said Rick Busch, of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, on Wednesday. “It’s just always turned out to be a cat that was someone’s pet that got away.”

Busch said the puma was pushed off its Virginia territory as the country grew, along with wolves and coyotes, the latter of which have made a comeback.

“Those were the first species that were taken out by settlers because of the danger to livestock,” Busch said. “They were hunted to protect cattle and other animals.”

Although they officially don’t exist, panthers have been seen.

“I’ve seen one three times, but it’s a stealthy animal and uncommon,” said Richard Gaya, who has taken pictures of one cat. Gaya’s Crozet home backs up to Shenandoah National Park with plenty of open field and mountainous terrain. He’s seen the cats on the edges of fields, but never close to the house.

“They haven’t bothered me and they don’t worry me,” he said. “Frankly, I’m more concerned with the coyote population: They’ll eat just about anything.”

Like coyotes’ prey - rabbits, squirrels, raccoons and other critters that thrive on the edge of the suburbs - cougar food supplies are increasing as deer populations skyrocket.

“A neighbor of mine saw one walking up my driveway and called me - we have sheep - but I didn’t see anything,” said Mike Marshall, publisher of the Crozet Gazette, a monthly community newspaper and Web site.

Marshall has written numerous stories on panther sightings. He said one paw print he was sure belonged to a cougar was determined by a Virginia Tech expert to have been made by a very large dog.

“It was a huge footprint; I wouldn’t want to meet that dog,” Marshall laughed.

Although the footprint was a disappointment, Marshall said he believes those he has interviewed.

“They are sober, grown-up people and I watched their faces and looked into their eyes and I believe they saw what they say they saw,” he said. “I think [mountain lions] are out there. I think one of the reasons we see so many is that the deer population is so big.”

Although catamounts have officially been rooted out of their old hunting grounds for a century, sightings have not ceased. Some 55 years ago, the Albemarle County sheriff and more than two-dozen local hunters packed up a passel of hounds and hunted the area around the Ivy Creek Natural Area for two lions. They were never found.

Over the years, reports of big cats have continued from Rockingham County to Culpeper to Crozet. Busch said a Crozet cougar cruising for food is not impossible; it’s just not all that likely.

“We just haven’t seen any evidence,” he said. “For a long time we didn’t think coyotes were coming back and then we started seeing them turn up as road kill. Perhaps someday we will, but we haven’t seen anything like that turning up for mountain lions. I hope we do.”" (Bryan McKenzie, The Daily Progress, February 28, 2008)