“We’re not crazy … ”: Accounts of cougars in LaFayette

After reports of a mountain lion in LaFayette surfaced last week, more people have contacted the Messenger with eyewitness accounts and reports of hearing high-pitched sounds attributable to a mountain lion.

Becky Reaves said her husband, Walker County State Prison chaplain Aaron Reeves, saw a mountain lion this past spring on their property off Straight Gut Road.

“He is ‘Mr. Practical,’” Reaves said about her husband.

In the middle of the day, Aaron was looking out at the hill on their property and saw what he thought was a strange rock he had never seen before. But then the rock “got up and started walking across the property,” she said.

Her husband described the animal as a large “yellowish blonde” cat with a long.

The couple found a large paw print and called the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Three days later, the DNR arrived at their residence, but rain had already washed the print away.

Luckily, Reaves said, she had snapped a picture of it, with a quarter placed in the print to show its rather large size.

The DNR told her they saw no sign of a mountain lion and claimed what her husband saw was a “mangy coyote.”

Reaves said her son and son-in-law, both correctional officers, claimed to have seen the mountain lion on the property as well.

“They made us feel like idiots,” she said. “We’re not crazy.”

Another sighting

Nancy Skidmore, who lives off state Highway 193 at the five-mile marker near Shinbone Ridge, said she was driving home about 10 years ago when she saw a large cat with a long tail crossing the highway with a cub in tow.

Skidmore said there is a spring near her residence, which is close to Dripping Springs Road, and she believes the animal got water from that area.

No one believed her, including her husband and son, she said.

The University of Georgia’s Walker County Extension Office told her that mountain lions were not in this area.

“I’m not crazy. I know what I saw,” Skidmore said.

Given the wide range of a mountain lion and the heavily-wooded area that stretches for miles and miles, Skidmore said, the animal could have came from anywhere.

About five years ago, her son went out onto the property at night to smoke a cigarette.

He had a flashlight with him and heard something behind him. She said her son flashed the light at the object and it was a mountain lion.

She said her son ran home and locked the doors and never doubted its existence again.

Over the years, two of her dogs, one a housedog and another a stray she took in, disappeared.

Prior to the dogs going missing, Skidmore said they would smell the air and refuse to go outside.

One day, one of the dogs was tied to a leash and when she returned, the dog was gone and its leash broken.

In the spring 2015, Skidmore recalled finding a large paw print in mud near the spring in her backyard that was too large for a deer or a pig. Her son saw the print as well.

Skidmore said in the 1960s, when she was about six years old and living in Floyd County, her father killed two mountain lions, on separate occasions, because, he said, they were a threat to safety.

“I remember it made a horrible screaming noise,” she said.