The community here lived up to one of its rumoured name origins on Sunday night when municipal councillor Allan Boynton, 26, saw a cougar on the road.
He said in an email to the Wellington Advertiser, “Last night at 830pm, I was on my way to hockey when I was driving north bound on the 12th Line, and as I was driving down the little hill at the Grand River, I saw something standing on the road.
“As I got to within 25 feet of this animal I realized it was not a dog, or a deer, or a wolf. It was indeed a cougar. It turned, looked at me, and then scaled a snow bank and was gone in a flash. My father has reportedly seen two [cougars] back of our farm one day, some three years ago.
Boynton continued, “I called him, and he reminded me that he is not that crazy. And of course, when I got to hockey I told the guys … Let’s just say I got grilled for a while.”
Boynton said his dad suggested on the return trip to look for tracks. Along with his brother, he stopped where he had seen the animal, and, “Sure enough, we found the tracks that were sheltered by wind and snow by the trees on either side of the road. The tracks were within inches of fresh deer tracks.”
Boynton said from his experience on council and looking through bills and accounts, there is a nearby farm that has numerous claims throughout the year on calf killings. I wonder if the cougar has anything to do with that. We took pictures of tracks and anything around that seemed interesting.”
He said in a later email that because the photos were taken at night they did not turn out very well.
He and his brother decided to name the cougar. “We have named it Nalla, for two reasons. That was the name of the cat in The Lion King, and if you spell Nalla backwards, it spells Allan, and I am the spotter of this fine looking animal.”
While Ministry of Natural Resources officials have received many reports of cougars in this general area over the years, they stated last year that there has been no genetic proof there are cougars here.
They will concede that the large cats being seen could be animals that have escaped from captivity.
Oddly enough, on the Township of East Garafraxa web site, there are a number of possible definitions of the word, “Garafraxa.”
The web site states, “How the name ‘Garafraxa’ came to be is unknown, but a number of theories exist.”
The first one is, “It is derived from an Indian word meaning "panther country."
