Vermont’s amateur catamount spotter
Reintroduce the catamount to the Green Mountains? Teri Lamphere, believed that she saw one in 2006.
Nicole Higgins DeSmet, Free Press Staff Writer
Note: This story was originally published in March 2019.
Common knowledge: the Catamount is the official mascot of University of Vermont sports teams.
As UVM men’s soccer heads into the NCAA tournament as the No. 1 seed, let’s dig deep into the mascot many people don’t seem to understand. Here’s an imagined, informative interview with “Rally,” UVM’s fuzzy, cuddly feline-of-the-sidelines.
Q: What on earth is a catamount?
A: The lower-case catamount is another name for the American panther, cougar, mountain lion, painter and puma.
Q: How did the UVM come to embrace it as its mascot?
A: In 1926 the Vermont Cynic asked students to vote for a mascot. According to UVM’s Vermont Quarterly, the four candidates were: the tomcat, the cow, the camel and the catamount. The catamount won, 138-126. It says nothing about who the runner-up was.
Q: You have to admit — catamount is a pretty obscure name.
A: Now, maybe. Earlier? Maybe not. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary traces it to 15th-century Middle English, which is a little odd — since my species, Puma concolor, is native to the New World. The “concolor” part is Latin, meaning “of a uniform color.”
Q: So the name was imported?
A: Looks like it. Also, the Spanish, who encountered my type of cat in the 16th century, called us “gato monte” (cat of the mountain), according to the San Diego Zoo.
That name didn’t stick, but some older ones did: “puma” is an Incan word for the animal. And “cougar” is thought to be derived from another native South American word, “cuguacuarana.”
Q: Are you finished? I was hoping to get back to the sports reference.
A: Ah. Well, if it helps, folks at the San Diego Zoo also extol the ability of catamounts or cougars, or mountain lions, or —
Q: Got that part.
A: They can jump like crazy. Eighteen feet straight up, into a tree. So — a good role model for basketball players.
Q: No offense, but aren’t catamounts extinct?
A: No offense taken. We were indeed hunted out of existence in the Eastern North America, but there are some hold-outs in Florida. Elsewhere, we range from British Columbia to Argentina.
The last confirmed sighting of a catamount in Vermont was on Thanksgiving Day, 1881.
Q: What happened to that one?
A: A guy named Alexander Crowell shot and killed it. It was common practice back then, to shoot critters that might threaten your livestock. Crowell had the carcass stuffed, and people paid to see it, according to the Vermont Historical Society.
Q: Is it still around?
A: You bet — it’s in the Vermont History Museum in Montpelier.
Q: A fitting memorial?
A: I prefer the bronze, life-sized sculpture better, up on UVM campus. More majestic. Proud. Threatening, even. Like our athletes.
Q: Yet you, Rally, seem pretty relaxed.
A: Would you rather I looked and behaved more like a real catamount?
Q: I don’t think —
A: Well, some UVM sports fans gave it a try, back in 1968. The Vermont Quarterly reported that Nancy and Robert Leggett adopted a young cougar from a zoo and called it “Rink.” That lasted about a year. Rink’s appetite and hunting instincts got people worried, and off it went to another zoo.
Q: Zoo number three?
A: Not funny. Any more questions?
Q: I keep hearing rumors about catamounts — the big cat — making a comeback in Vermont. Any truth to that?
A: Probably not. But they range far and wide. It could happen. Some folks are even talking about re-introducing us into these parts, to help control the population of white-tailed deer.
Q: In an essay to UVM’s Headwaters magazine (Oct. 31, 2017), Emily Pareles writes the catamount’s absence from Vermont ‘makes him the perfect messenger to promote concrete environmental change.’ Comment?
A: Amen to that.
Q: One last roar?
A: Lower-case catamounts don’t roar. We make a lot of other sounds — purring, even — but we don’t roar, according to biologists.
Q: What about big-C Catamounts?
A: (Roar!)
