A reported cougar sighting near the Legacy Ridge community at the end of July has many people asking for an update on the situation.
“We do still have a camera up in the area… we haven’t had any cougars sighted on it at all,” said Officer Jolynn Beauchene with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).
As a follow up, officers were also back on the scene of the reported sighting about a week and a half ago where the big cat was reportedly seen walking on a path behind homes just northeast of the Country Vista Apartments. Beauchene says the WDFW hasn’t been able to verify that the animal seen there actually was a cougar.
“We don’t have any verified sightings in the Liberty Lake area,” she said.
That hasn’t kept people from being alarmed about the possibility. When word about the cat first spread, there was a big reaction in the community, which Beauchene says might be attributable to social media.
“Initially it was going around Facebook; we didn’t get any reports,” she said. In a reaction to the original Facebook post, someone added their own photo of what they said was a cougar spotted in the area, although it turned out to be closer to Micah.
“Someone took a screenshot from a video of another reported cougar that wasn’t sighted in Liberty Lake and posted it,” said Beauchene.
Officers studied the screenshot and did initially think it might be a cougar. But after viewing a better quality version of the picture, could see that someone had mixed up their felines.
“It turned out to be a big house cat… When we zoomed in you could see stripes on it’s tail and other markings.”
Still, with the word out in public, WDFW officials received a lot of concerned calls about big cats.
“And a lot of it was people hearing things in the brush and thinking maybe it could be one.”
Beauchene says it isn’t unheard of for cougars to pass through the area, but with the extreme heat recently they would likely keep moving due to a lack of brush to keep cool and a regular water source. A resident in the less-populated Saltese Flats area did report seeing one at night last week, which Beauchene says isn’t too rare because they follow deer into the area sometimes.
Following the reported Legacy Ridge cougar sighting, WDFW officers also investigated a complaint of someone possibly trying to bait a big cat with food in the area, but Beauchene says that also turned out to be a false alarm.
“I’m guessing it was someone trying to feed stray cats because the bowls were really small.”
Because putting food out can draw in animals like raccoons and other critters, WDFW discourages this.
