'Cougar' that alarmed Whitehorse neighbourhood just a fox

Whitehorse residents who reported a cougar harassing their neighbourhood earlier this month may have simply been fooled by a late night predator.

Hidden Valley residents say hair-raising howls from what they thought was a screeching feline terrified pets and disturbed their sleep. Environment Yukon says investigators are now 99 per cent sure they can identify the prowler, and it's not a cougar: it's a fox.

Dave Bakica, conservation officer, says after hearing the family's audio recording of the screams, he turned to the internet to find out they'd all been outfoxed.

After comparing the recording to several recordings of foxes they found online, Bakica says, "I've never heard a fox making noise like this before, but it's pretty clear, at least to my ear it's the exactly the same."

Bakica said they happen to have a British colleague working in Faro, who confirmed the howler's identity.

"I played the noise for him and right away he looked at me and said, 'Oh, that's a fox.' And I said, really? And he said that in England you hear that sound all the time. So I'm pretty convinced that the sound they heard was a fox." 

Another man in the area told Bakica that he'd never heard the noise before either — then he saw a fox actually coming up his driveway making the noise. 

At the same time, Bakica says it doesn't disprove neighbourhood claims they saw a cougar in the area. In May, a Whitehorse man captured photos of two cougars near his rural home.

Four nights of video footage caught dogs, a cat and and a couple of foxes in frame, but no cougars.