Beverly Immel is still excited about the large black cat she saw from her office window in December. "It was solid black, and he was a big boy," said Immel, general manager of Independence Village of White Lake. "I'm talking a 150-pound animal, and I have to tell you he was my Christmas present. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen."He was gorgeous. It was right out my window, my manager's window here."The animal that padded softly out of the trees bordering the retirement community on Union Lake Road was definitely a feline, she said."He had a long tail, kind of just like my domestic cat at home, only on steroids," Immel said.About five people saw the large black cat that December day, said Immel; the facility's maintenance man saw it the next day.Dennis Fijalkowski, director of the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy in Bath, believes there are 50 to 80 cougars roaming Michigan - and, despite a well-publicized report of an incident in September 2003 where a cougar supposedly stalked a woman in Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, people have little to fear from them.That said, the conservancy did print a brochure, "Living with Cougars in Michigan," to try to keep human-cougar encounters to a minimum.

"The people of Michigan currently are ill-prepared for a wild cougar population," Fijalkowski said. "One of our objectives is to bring them up to speed on these cougars as soon as possible."


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