Two strikes and you’re out. So say officials from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to Crozet resident Susie Humphreys after a motion-sensitive camera failed to catch a cougar on her property for the second time over a four-day period.

Humphreys says she has seen the big cat repeatedly in her yard and that she can no longer let her 7-year-old granddaughter play outside. She says she saw the big cat once last weekend while the camera was mounted on a tree in her yard from Friday, March 7 to Tuesday, March 11. The camera didn’t catch the cat, however, and that, says wildlife biologist Mike Dye, is what matters.

“We don’t have any evidence to suggest there’s any reason to pursue this,” says Dye, in the department’s Fredericksburg office, explaining that once again, the camera caught small animals including a rabbit and a house cat.”We’re not saying she’s crazy or making it up,” Dye adds, “we just don’t have what we need to devote the time to it.”

Dye and other game and wildlife officials say there is no documented evidence of a reproducing cougar population in Virginia, and they say many of the cougar reports they do investigate prove to be other animals– bobcats, in particular.

Even if game officials are giving up on Humphreys’ cougar, at least one cougar expert says he believes her. West Virginia-based John Lutz, founder of the Eastern Puma Research Network, visited Humphreys’ property earlier this week and says prints around her property could be from a cougar.

He also says he discovered “scat” on an adjacent property that he believes could be from a cougar. He has sent it to a Canadian laboratory for DNA testing to determine what type of animal produced it. Results will take six to eight weeks.

Lutz, a former radio reporter who has been studying cougars since 1965, says he firmly believes cougars are in Virginia, despite the official doubts. He says some of the animals are pets that have been released, and there is some reason to believe that is the case with the cat Humphreys claims to see.

Wild cougars, he says, are extremely shy and prefer to hunt their living prey. “If one of these cats would come up and eat dog food or bird seed, these are cougars that have been in captivity and have lost their fear of children,” he says. “Those kind scare the hell out of me.”

Humphreys says she has repeatedly seen the cougar in her back yard eating dog food out of her dog’s bowl. Both she and her granddaughter’s father, David Shifflett, have seen the cat around her house clearly and insist it’s neither bobcat nor bear.

With the game department’s decision to stop investigating, Humphreys says she feels deserted and afraid.

“I asked him, what are we supposed to do? In other words, I’m stuck with the damn cat, and there’s nothing to do with it? He said, ‘Yeah,” she says of Dye.

She’s not just afraid– she’s angry, too, that her eyewitness account isn’t evidence enough to prompt a bigger game department response.

“Our safety has to be jeopardized,” she says, “because these morons don’t want to believe anyone.”

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