But What's it Called?

click on image to enlarge

       Yes, it's real, photographed from Griffith Park overlooking Hollywood, front page of today's L.A. Times.  It's being tracked and imaged by well-protected cameras where infrared beams trigger the shots at night when the creature is up and around.

       I saw one once in a different local mountain, just for a moment, in daytime, and gone, and have seen a trailhead warning in the north San Fernando Valley, one being sighted--I turned back from that hike, not to return.

       But I've heard the animal called a number of names, and today's article used all of them:  puma, cougar, mountain lion.   Merriam-Webster even includes two more:

            cougar:  a large powerful tawny brown cat...formerly
            widespread in the Americas but now reduced in number or
            extinct in many areas--called also catamount, mountain lion,
            puma, panther.