"It’s been 140 years since the last Eastern cougar was taken in Pennsylvania, and though there have been literally thousands of reports since, not once has anyone been able to produce a shred of evidence, a verifiable track, a piece of scat, a clump of hair, to prove that the cats have returned"......................(This) "regal predator became a victim of what I believe is the eighth deadly sin, the one on which all the others are predicated — fear".................... "Wasn’t it fear of the wilderness and its handmaiden, greed, that led us to hack away at the forests of Pennsylvania until there was no place left for the cat to hide?"................... "Wasn’t it fear that led us to harry and harass them until the last one was shot in rural Berks County in 1874?"................. "And isn’t it still just fear that leads us to want to believe, as the woods reclaim the land around here, that maybe, just maybe, the big cats are coming back?"................ "Because if that’s the case, if they really are stronger than all of the fearsome things we have done to them, then maybe we can be absolved of our original sin?"......................"Maybe there is something in the woods that is truly terrifying and far beyond our ability to comprehend or control, an apex predator driven by the basest of instincts''...... Maybe it’s the same monster that killed off the mountain lions"-----(US)--------Shamus McGraw is the author of the forthcoming book-"BETTING THE FARM ON A DROUGHT: STORIES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

: Op-Ed Contributor Monsters in the Woods By SEAMUS McGRAW Maybe he is still out there  somewhere, hiding in the shadows. Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/1D5JCRg