Did you lose a mountain lion?
Rangers at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas are trying to solve the mysterious appearance of a cougar with a collar.
"This collared mountain lion must have drifted into the park from somewhere else. It's unusual, but exciting to see this collared individual because it reflects the vast roving and range behaviors of Mountain Lions," the park wrote on Facebook.
Mountain lions are native to west Texas so the big cat itself isn't unusual, but rangers can't figure out where the collar around its neck came from. The park stopped collaring the area's cats in the 1980s so rangers suspect some other researchers are tracking this mountain lion.
"Since this is not our cat, we wanted to share the image to help whoever is doing research, find and monitor their kitty. We've reached out to local researchers to try and identify the cat and its collar, with no luck," the park shared on Facebook.
The big cat was first spotted on the park's trail camera in 2020 so the mountain lion may have moved on by now. Someone on social media suggested that the park put out a giant cardboard box and wait for the kitty to find it.
Photo: Guadalupe Mountains National Park