By Wiley Wood

Are there cougars in Connecticut? Whenever the question comes up, one local authority on wildlife, a skeptic, always says, “Well, I’m not seeing any deer carcasses stashed in trees.” Then last month, a deer carcass was found stashed in a tree.

June Peterson was walking in Barbour Woods along the carriage road to Killarney Bridge when she saw the body of a fawn hanging in the branches of a hemlock tree and documented it by taking a photo.

The fawn, Peterson estimated, was about six feet off the ground. When she returned the following week to check, its body was still there and starting to decompose.

These facts were presented to Paul Rego, a wildlife biologist at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, who was asked whether a mountain lion might have cached its prey in a tree. Rego’s response was, “It’s not a common behavior of cougars generally.”

He explained that while other big cats on other continents do carry their prey into trees, the North American cougar tends to leave its kill on the ground and scratch leaves and debris over any portions left uneaten.

Bear are known to kill and consume fawns in the spring, but Rego also considered it unlikely that this was a bear’s handiwork.

He asked about the weight of the fawn, and pointed out that either of these predators would have consumed a large portion of the animal after killing it and would have returned in subsequent days to finish it off.

Who did this then? “It’s not consistent with the behavior of any wildlife in our woods,” said Rego. “My first thought would be a human.”

We may never know how the body of a fawn came to be draped over a branch in Barbour Woods, but we can be fairly certain that it’s not because we have cougars stalking our forests. And that’s a relief.

Photo, top, by June Peterson.