# Cougar in a mine?



## HighNDry (Dec 26, 2007)

Went out hiking last Saturday. We peeked into the opening of a mine that had been partially hidden by boulders. It had a metal grate a few feet inside to keep people out. We didn't have a flashlight and it was so dark inside. We couldn't see beyond the metal grate. My wife took a picture with the camera flash to see if it would show up. I had walked a few feet away from the opening. She came walking up to me and said that when she took the picture with the flash she heard something inside the mine. I asked her what it sounded like and she said it was probably just a drip of water.

When we got to the car she was reviewing the pictures and said the picture inside the mine didn't turn out except for the two glowing eyes. I took the camera and looked at it and sure enough two glowing eyes. The rest of the picture was very hazy looking, like the flash light reflected off the walls of the mine and back into the camera. I looked closer and could see a very faint, blurry, shadow of what looks like a cougar or bobcat with a humped rear end. 

Anyway, it gave me a little bit of a shiver. The photo is pretty bad so I don't know if it would show up if I tried to post it here. I guess it is very possible that a cougar was in the mine. I think I even joked with my wife while we were at the opening about being careful maybe a mountain lion lives in there. The grate had openings big enough that a bobcat or cougar could easily get in there.

I guess, I'm wondering if a cougar or bobcat would just hunker down inside the mine and pretty much ignore people that peered into it?


----------



## Packfish (Oct 30, 2007)

Certainly have seen tracks in some of the mines and caves that I used to explore in Cache Valley in the late 70's- always made me feel a tinch errie.


----------



## Kevin D (Sep 15, 2007)

Did it look like this??










Took this photo in a cave up Card Canyon in Logan Canyon, but I've caught plenty in old in mine shafts as well.

To answer your question HighnDry, ya, they're likely to just hold still there hoping they won't be noticed. But crawl in close for a selfie and they tend to get a little snarly.


----------



## BPturkeys (Sep 13, 2007)

Well, givin the facts, dark place, big glowing eyes, blurry photo, I am more incline to think Sasquatch.


----------



## HighNDry (Dec 26, 2007)

Kevin D,

How dark was it inside that cave? And is that taken with just a flash on your camera?

My wife's picture is really bad--maybe because she was out in the light taking a picture into the mine. I think her flash was pretty ineffective because of it. Plus, it's a fairly cheap point and shoot. The form does show the eyes shinning and the humped back of the body very similar to this photo.


----------

