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Did a mountain lion stroll down a Rochester street?

Ring camera footage from Stephany Baez shows what appears to be a big cat wandering Grand Avenue early Wednesday morning.
Provided/Stephany Baez
Ring camera footage from Stephany Baez shows what appears to be a big cat wandering Grand Avenue early Wednesday morning.

Just before 4 a.m. Wednesday, the Ring camera on Stephany Baez’s Grand Avenue home was activated. Her dogs also started barking and howling.

“My mom had me watch the video,” she said. “My mom was lucky she didn’t step out onto the porch for a bogey (cigarette) around that time, she would have had a heart attack.”

For just three seconds at the beginning of the recording, something can be seen walking along the edge of the road, its dark form illuminated only by streetlights. It’s not exactly clear just what it is. A few things are clear: its gait is reminiscent of a cat; its long, slender tail bobs from side to side with each step; and it’s big.

“We do have outside cats, sometimes they come to our porch and we could see them on the camera, but we could see it clear,” Baez said. “Once I’d seen the camera, I was like, that tail was way too long and, it was way too big. The posture was way too big.”

The video, shared on Facebook, Reddit, and in the Ring camera social app, immediately gained attention with locals. Some speculated that it could be a trick of light or perspective. Others theorized it could be an escaped animal from the Seneca Park Zoo: the zoo does house an assortment of big cats, including African lions, Canada lynx, snow leopards, and an Amur tiger named Katya. Others said it could be an escaped pet.

The zoo is about six and a half miles from Baez’s house. A spokesperson for the Rochester Police Department said all of the animals at the zoo were accounted for.

But the most common refrain from commenters was a more natural explanation, or at least one rooted in Rochester history: a mountain lion.

New York, including the Rochester-region, was home to the eastern cougar, a widespread subspecies of mountain lion whose range spanned from Canada down to South Carolina. The eastern cougar is extirpated from New York — meaning humans drove it out of the state long ago — and has been presumed extinct since 1938, the year of the last confirmed sighting. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared the big cat extinct in 2011.

But thousands of sightings have been reported over the years, including in New York. In fact, sightings of cougars are so common, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation maintains a webpage advising people to be wary of hoaxes.

“There are many images of mountain lions circulating on the internet with false claim they were taken in New York,” the page reads. “Many of these photographs were copied from previous news reports or articles from western states where native populations of cougars exist.”

The DEC also will only investigate instances where physical evidence, like hair or scat, is found. Baez said she looked for any marks left behind by whatever is seen in the video but found nothing.

But the presumed extinction of the eastern cougar doesn’t mean it's impossible for a mountain lion to have made it from its native range, largely states west of the Rocky Mountains, to Grand Avenue. In 2010, for example, a mountain lion was confirmed to have passed through Lake George during an estimated 1,800-mile odyssey from its home in South Dakota’s Black Mountains.

Its journey ended in Milford, Connecticut, when it was struck and killed by an SUV.

There's also a population of endangered Florida panthers, a cougar subspecies, that's generally found in the southwest part of its namesake state.

WXXI News shared the video with a spokesperson for the DEC Wednesday. The spokesperson said she would “see what I can find,” but did not comment further.

Capt. Greg Bello of the Rochester Police Department confirmed that there have been no reports of an animal matching the description in the Goodman section in the past week.

He speculated it could be a large fox, which the DEC also notes are sometimes mistaken for mountain lions.

“Mountain lions are like 75 pounds and up, do you think it’s really that big???” Bello said in a text message. “I’m very intrigued on this.”

For comparison, larger male German shepherds weigh around 80 pounds.

Brad Gibson, a neighbor of Baez’s, is an environmental professor whose past research largely focused on urban populations of coyotes and black bears. He said what he saw in the video is clear.

“It’s a mountain lion,” Gibson said. “When you look from start to back, it has a J-shaped tail, so it’s a thick, long tail. It’s pretty tubular, it doesn’t taper really, like you’d expect from a dog or coyote or something.”

By Thursday, the number of reports received by RPD had spiked. But the department reported receiving no videos, photos, or other forms of confirmation and were not able to verify any of the reports. Bello did say there was a temporary shelter in place warning on Rauber Street early Thursday morning after an officer reported seeing an animal fitting the description. The department also deployed drones to aid in the search. Nothing was found.

“We basically did a little stay in place for no reason,” Bello said.

For now, the shape caught by Baez's camera is a mystery, with only one thing for certain: something is in the video, and that something strongly resembles a big cat.

Grand Avenue is a quiet residential strip of the Beechwood neighborhood.
Gino Fanelli
Grand Avenue is a quiet residential strip of the Beechwood neighborhood.

Just past 11 p.m. Wednesday, Grand Avenue was quiet, save for the gentle rattle of hip-hop from a porch stereo and the occasional sound of cars passing by. On that night, like most others, the neighborhood seemed less of a safari and more of the quiet residential strip it is.

For Baez, whatever is out there is a cause for concern.

“On my street, there’s a lot of dogs outside, like that are left fenced outside, I don’t want them to get hurt,” she said. “There’s also a lot of kids on bikes and stuff that come through, I don’t want them to get hurt either.”

Gino Fanelli is an investigative reporter who also covers City Hall. He joined the staff in 2019 by way of the Rochester Business Journal, and formerly served as a watchdog reporter for Gannett in Maryland and a stringer for the Associated Press.