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On an afternoon in early February, Pleasantville residents reported to police that there was an uninvited guest in their neighborhood.
A bobcat.
On Feb. 1, it was originally reported to the Mount Pleasant Police Department that a mountain lion was roaming the area of homes on Heritage Drive in Pleasantville. Police Chief Louis Alagno said a resident called saying there was a large, tan-colored cat roaming the area and another called saying there was a large feline as big as a medium-sized dog with white spots on its fur.
Police responded to the location but were unable to locate the animal.
Alagno said that it was determined that, given the description of the animal, it was a bobcat and not a mountain lion as originally reported.
Pleasantville resident David Whitney lives at the house where the animal was spotted and said that he didn't expect to encounter it again.
“The police said people saw it running up my driveway to the back of my house,” Whitney said in the February article.. “It’s not going to stay here though, so I’m not concerned. I don’t have any constant source of food around here so it’s going to move on.”
Melissa Grigione, a wildlife expert at Pace University, said shortly after the sighting that areas such as Pleasantville are much more common places for animals like bobcats than people would suspect.
“Mountain lions used to be native to this area and they’re starting to try and come back here and become familiar with the area. It’s sort of an eastward bound movement that they’re going through now,” said Grigione in February, an associate professor and director of the Graduate Program in Environmental Science at Pace University. “Now that it’s been warmer here, too, there’s more forage, which means more deer around, which is tempting to them.”
Since the February incident, no bobcats or mountain lions have been reported in the Pleasantville area.
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