New in Town: What’s My Lion?

In the summer before we moved from our condo townhouse in Irvington, NY, the place was overrun by coyotes. Seriously. A pack of them even took down a deer near our house.

I’m not saying that’s the reason why we decided to move to Stamford. On the other hand, we supposed that the entry into the neighborhood of wild, vicious carnivores was not likely to do a whole lot for the property values.

Anyway, once we moved to Stamford, we were immediately on the lookout for any wildlife larger than a squirrel. We saw a flock of wild turkeys along Riverbank Road, but they seemed harmless enough. But then came the news about the .

You remember that, right? It was back in early June when the mountain lion was spotted (thus becoming a cheetah. HAH!). This had animal experts puzzled, because the last mountain lion sighting in these parts had been about 100 years ago.

Given the demographics of Greenwich (we have driven by homes there that make the White House seemed like a charming bungalow) and it’s probable density of rich divorcees, I was convinced the mountain lion was most likely a cougar, if you get my drift.

But a few days later, a mountain lion was, indeed, discovered in Milford, about 50 miles north of Greenwich. It was "discovered," apparently, by the front bumper of an SUV. Mountain lion: deceased. SUV: creased.

It was disconcerting to know that in order to get from Greenwich to Milford, the cat would have had to go through Stamford! Of course, there is no way to know with certainty that the Milford mountain lion was the same mountain lion as the Greenwich mountain lion, but one can only hope so, because the alternative would be that there is a den of mountain lions hiding out behind the Home Depot in Norwalk.

The question remains, where did this lion come from after a full mountain-lion-free century? The conjecture was that it had been in captivity, possibly in someone’s private zoo.

Once again, I must say that, if you have seen some of the houses in Greenwich, you know that this is not outside the realm of possibility. In fact, some of the domiciles are big enough to have a zoo inside the house. And really, if you’re going to have a mountain lion, shouldn’t it be an indoor cat and not an outside cat that roams freely around the neighborhood, dining on wild turkeys?

For more on our adventures as first-time homeowners at age 57, and moving to Stamford, visit http://theupsizers.wordpress.com/