Back in the early 1990's , or there about , The Pa. Blame comm. was holding public meetings about how they were going to kill off our deer herd in Pa. Since my world was , that of an on the road , emergency service engineer covering half the state of Pa. , I went to several of these public meetings , just because I had to be out of town overnight , in the various high school auditoriums , where they would be held. There would be about 200 folks at each gathering ,hunters that spent more than a little time in the woods. Eventually , the discussions would turn to mtn. lion sightings. Well....that subject was enough to threaten ending the deer discussions , meeting over. The mtn. lion discussions moved to the high school foyer. Since I had seen three of the big cats traveling roads in the Pa. back country , I inquired of a Blame Comm. employee , how I had seen so many lions . He as much called me a liar , as his superiors had instructed him to do.. He was one of the local blame wardens , and I knew where he lived . I didn't care to be insulted , as such , and told him , If I found one road killed , I would deposit it on his front porch , after I called the news media. He told me , curtly , he would arrest me for that. Two days later , I was traveling to one of my northern accounts , and bingo , a big dun colored mtn. lion crossed the road in a line of three cars going up a hill with four lanes to accommodate truck traffic. My brain flashed back to my discussion with the blame warden. Unfortunately , the big cat leaped between the two cars ahead of me with such velocity , he bounced off the elevated road bank and piled up , taking maybe 20 seconds to right himself. At least I got a good close up view of him , but was disappointed , I couldn't put his carcass on the blame wardens porch. (He sounded pretty cranky during the discussion we had ,outside the high school auditorium. )
Seems , if govt. doesn't want to draw attention to a situation (stocking Mtn. lions in the Pa. woods to facilitate killing off the deer herd ) , they will go to great lengths to black out news. They think the general population is stupid . Since I made it my business to be an unofficial "clearing house" , of lion sightings . In my daily travels on business , folks would share what thy knew of the lion sightings in a relaxed atmosphere. I'de have to use a 1000 word essay to cover them all. The folks interviewed , were professional educated people ,Dr's , technologists, state policemen, university employees (not connected with the animal experimentation --relocation , I stumbled onto.) ...........Oh well