The Florida Panther is a rare beast. And despite being the state animal, less than 160 wild panthers, or cougars, are left in Florida’s wild places. But two recent encounters have people in the Sunshine State talking comeback. The first was at the home of Phil Hendra in East Fort Myers where one of the animals sat on the home’s back porch for some 20 minutes. The picture below was on Hendra’s Facebook page.
The second sighting occurred about 35 miles away in the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary while Tina Dorschel was taking a morning walk. As the video above shows, one of the animals sprinted by her while she was on a boardwalk covering a marshy area. It wasn’t small so you can see why the encounter probably scared the bejesus out of her.
These cats once roamed the entirety of North America but in the southeast, are now mostly concentrated in Southern Florida. The Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge is in Naples.
