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| 7/31/2008 1:58:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article
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Courtesy photo/Dean Duquette
A cell phone captured this photo of a cougar prowling an Enterprise neighborhood Sunday evening, July 27. |
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Cougar invades Enterprise yard, family gathering
Full-grown cat is still at large after clan’s unnerving July 27 encounter
By Elane Dickenson
Wallowa County Chieftain
The idea of a full-grown cougar prowling around a residential neighborhood in Enterprise is enough to raise the hackles of every parent in town.
That frightening scenario became a reality the evening of Sunday, July 27, when a leisurely summer family gathering at the home of Darrel and Christin Brann on SE 2nd Street was disrupted by the sight of a "good-sized" cougar in the yard where young children had been playing just moments before.
"We were all sitting on the front porch, and all the kids had just come in off the sidewalk where they were riding bikes, when we saw it," Darrel Brann said. He estimating the time of the sighting at around 7:30 to 8 p.m. while it was still light.
He caught a glimpse of what he thought for an instant was a large dog at the side of the house, but then saw its big tail and realized it was a cougar.
Brann said the big cat stopped in its tracks about 20 feet from the house, and stared at them for two or three seconds before trotting off.
"My first thought was 'Where are all the kids?' even though we could see most of them," recalled Brann. "We were dumbfounded."
The cougar then trotted to the nearby house of Dean and Rosa Duquette, and jumped over the railing onto their front porch.
Dean Duquette was setting up his barbecue grill on the porch. He had just stepped inside the house when he heard a big thump - and looked out to see the cougar. After recovering from his initial shock, he thought to grab his cell phone and was able to get a photo of the rear half of the cat, with its head behind a flowerpot, before it jumped off the porch and disappeared.
In the meantime, Brann had called the Wallowa County Justice Center, and county deputy Kevin McQuead responded to the scene; Marlyn Riggs, a government hunter with the Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, was also among those searching for the cougar.
"One of the neighbors thought it was treed, but it turned out to be a raccoon," Duquette said.
As of press time, the Chieftain was unable to find out what happened to Enterprise's roaming cougar. McQuead was unavailable for comment and, when contacted, Riggs said that for him to speak about such an incident would be against his agency's policy.
Brann said that his house - where he lives with wife Christin and their four children, who range in age from nine months to six years - is close to Prairie Creek. The cougar, he said, was wet, presumably from crossing the creek.
According to Vic Coggins, district biologist of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, cougar sightings in populated areas of Wallowa County are relatively common, though he couldn't remember the last time one of the big cats was reported seen in a residential neighborhood in Enterprise.
The cougar's behavior was "unusual, but not unheard of," Coggins said, adding that the animal would definitely be a target to be killed or removed as a threat to human health and safety.
"We had another like it on the porch at Sam Wade's house near Wade's Point last winter," he said. "Cougar sightings are frequent, but not frequent in residential neighborhoods."
However, the Chieftain learned that about a month-and-a-half ago, a cougar was spotted near the Sturm resident at the edge of Joseph, near the baseball field, in mid-June of this year.
Coggins didn't know what happened to the cougar, but said that if it wasn't killed, it has probably left the area.
He said that while statistics are not kept on cougar sightings in Wallowa County, figures are available for the number of cougars killed by hunters or for damage control: 40 in 2007 and 50 in 2006. "Those numbers are high," said Coggins, who feels that cougar numbers have leveled off or are even down a little in the county because of better hunter success in recent years.
But that is of little consolation to the Brann family, who will have a hard time feeling entirely safe again when their children go outside to play in their own yard.
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