What’s out there?

    That question has dominated my interest in wildlife since I was a little boy growing up in the swamps of Southeast Texas. I can’t remember a time I passed by a forest, marsh or pasture and not wondered just what kind of wild creatures roamed there, hiding in the shadows, prowling after the setting of the sun.

    As I look at the window of my office, I see a patch of woods a few hundred yards away that links to a bayou running through my hometown. Even now the thought of the animals that might just dwell there stimulates my curiosity and inspires me to seek them out.

    My fascination on this subject ran into some problems in the earliest years of this quest.

    Back in 1984 when I was just in fourth grade, I read an article in Outdoor Life about the red wolf.

    The article talked about how this once common species was declared extinct in the wild and how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went out and captured the remaining animals for a captive breeding program. The coolest part of the story was the last ones came from Orange County, which is where I lived. I already thought wolves were great to begin with but this article helped inspire a lifelong love affair with wolves that burns as strongly today as it ever did.

    Well, that and an encounter later that same year.

    My little league baseball team the Bucs had its end of the year party at Claiborne West Park, a beautiful 500-acre wooded park on the edge of Cow Bayou, which intersects near the southern boundary of the Sabine River. Our party was held at one of several bungalows near the park entrance, which is right on the edge of the woods. As we were eating hot dogs and chips, I looked over on the edge of the trees and saw a reddish-brown, long legged canine that looked a whole lot like a red wolf.

    “Dad, look at that!” I exclaimed.

    “Is that a red wolf?”

    “Yes it is,” he said.

    I can still see the animal as plainly as if I were looking at it and remember it had its thin summer coat, tall ears, a broad forehead and was panting from the brutal heat and humidity. The animal eventually disappeared into cover but never from my mind.

    This would be the first time I would learn that what I saw in the wild would sometimes conflict with official reports. I learned at a very young age that what the textbooks said about wildlife wasn’t always accurate.

    The red wolf was the first animal that inspired me to seek out mysterious animal reports and also the first animal I wrote about professionally. My very first newspaper column published in Oct. 1992 was about a report of alleged red wolf sightings in Orange County and featured a photograph I took of a pair that was part of the captive breeding program at the Texas Zoo in Victoria.

    One thing I have learned is that maps in wildlife guidebooks are not always so accurate when it comes to animal distribution. Take for example, the road-killed porcupine photographed by Dean Bossert, manager of the McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Sabine Pass that we ran last week in the Critter Cam.

    Why was there a porcupine in Sabine Pass? Could it be there are isolated populations of animals living far away from their supposed native range?

    Jaguars are native to Texas and once roamed throughout most of the state but they were eliminated by the 1920s. Now however jaguars have been verified by state-sponsored trail camera programs in New Mexico and Arizona and are believed to be coming in from Mexico. I first hypothesized jaguars were still moving into Texas on these pages several years ago and have since spoken with a couple of very reliable witnesses who claim sightings along the border in South Texas.

    How could this be?

    If they are crossing into our two neighboring states, there is no reason they can’t cross into ours. Some argue that on the South Texas border there is too much development between the Mexican side and known jaguar populations in Mexico.

    Well, there is a lot of development between Sabine Pass and Austin but somehow a porcupine (and I am imagine a few of his friends) made it down to the coast. Animals are extremely crafty in their migrations and in the case of the jaguar it could be possible they are crossing into the much less densely populate Trans Pecos region and traveling down the Rio Grande corridor toward the brush country. Or maybe there have been a few in Texas all along and we just did not catch it.

    After all, officials have been denying cougar sightings in East Texas for decades but obviously someone didn’t tell the one that walked in front of me 20 years ago it was not supposed to be there. And there are hundreds of people with similar experiences in our vast state.

    In Texas, you never know what you’re doing to encounter because our wild lands are truly the place where the wild things are.

(NOTE: If you have had encounters with animals that are not supposed to be in your neck of the woods, e-mail me your stories or photographs. I will run the best of them in a future column.)

    By Chester Moore, Jr. is The News Outdoors Editor.  To contact Chester Moore, e-mail him at cmoore@fishgame.com. You can hear him on the radio Fridays from 6-7 p.m. on Newstalk AM 560 KLVI.