And the ones who are the size of a Great Dane can eat any corn fed biped they pick up on the cafeteria line.

You're lucky to have seen one. I'm jealous. But I'm not looking forward to the day when the ones up there get over their fear of people. Those guys can bring the mayhem and they won't limit their diets to Ohioans once they start to figure out how easy it is to get fresh monkey. That's inevitable in the Smokies, and will be worse in the long run for the cats than for the primates.

I have a coworker who does field work in SW Virginia. He has seen two mountain lions within the past year or so. They were fairly close, so no denying what they were.

I've also seen a mountain lion in the Smoky Mtn

Was it black? If so, you were hallucinating. Black painters don't and never have existed. If it wasn't black...I dunno. I suppose it's possible there's a remnant population that aren't just escaped 'pets', but think about the very large range these cats have, the fragmentation of the landscape in the Southern Appalachians, the relative frequency of well-documented Florida Panther sightings, the number of mouth-breathing rednecks who would absolutely love to achieve eternal glory by taking down a mountain lion and bringing its carcass to a photographer at the local paper, and the total number of actual verified mountain lions.

The "woman screaming" is how most who have heard it describe a bobcat. I love the sound but it never fails to give me chills at first.

Three weeks ago several of us watched one nonchalantly walk out from under a mobile home just up the road, look across at us, and then slowly walk up the hill into the woods. It appears they are pretty active in the day during mating season.