Cumberland — As best we can, let’s try to sort out this mountain lion thing that has flashed before our eyes during the past week or three.

There seems to be some confusion.

On March 6, I wrote that there is a false e-mail making the rounds from one computer to another. It claims that a massive mountain lion was struck and killed on the highway near Grantsville. As I pointed out, that mountain lion actually met its fate on an Arizona roadway. I stand by that revelation per www.snopes.com.

On that same Outdoors page was an Associated Press article about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. After years of study, that agency has determined that the eastern cougar is extinct. Fine.

I didn’t say there were no mountain lions or cougars or pumas in the East, and neither did the federal coot and carp agency.

I actually believe that there are mountain lions in our neck of the woods. I believe it, even though there are no carcasses, no undeniable photographs and no baby mountain lions squished dead on Interstate 68.

I believe those animals are here because too many responsible people, who have no reason to fib, have said they have seen the cats. I know it is anecdotal and thus not scientific, but that’s what I believe.

The USFWS biologists believe that the eastern lion has been gone from these parts since 1930. They say the cougars sighted in the East are escaped or released captives or have migrated from the West or even from South America.

I accept that. It makes sense. Coyotes migrated here. Why not cougars.

Missouri is finding out that mountain lions migrate. Since November, six sightings have been verified. In the cases where carcasses were found, most have been young male lions.

The most recent confirmation came near the community of Rover. A man reported seeing a mountain lion get momentarily caught in a fence. A conservation agent retrieved hair from the barbs on the fence and laboratory analysis confirmed it to be from a cougar.

Additional testing of the hair will take place in an attempt to determine where the cat may have originated. Those tests will take months.

The real reason I am writing this column, though, is because on March 20 I ran a letter from Charles Illif. Illif wrote that he was told by Maryland Department of Natural Resources personnel that he didn’t see what he saw. He didn’t like being called I liar. I don’t blame him a bit.

Illif said on opening day of the 2010 Maryland bow season he saw a mountain lion along Town Creek.

I take him at his word.

Illif’s letter opened the mountain-lion-sighting floodgates. E-mails, letters and phone calls were directed to your local outdoor editor about similar visions and I realized quickly that unless the publisher allows me to have three Outdoors pages per week that I would not have room to relate the various big kitty-cat encounters, no matter how interesting.

So, if I have not returned your phone call or replied to your e-mail or sent you a letter in response to your correspondence, I am doing that now. I believe each and every one of you.

And, when somebody out there in readership land finally has a mountain lion carcass or finds an infant cougar drinking milk out of Boots’ bowl on the front porch, or takes a picture of an adult cougar walking off with Boots in its mouth, let me be the first reporter-editor you contact because we will have one heck of a story.

In the meantime, be careful. Apparently it is a jungle out there.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.