Remembering the Minneapolis cougar that captured the imagination of a neighborhood

In December of 2023, a home surveillance camera detected a rather large and unexpected guest walking in an urban neighborhood: a 132-pound cougar striding through an alley.  

“It was very thrilling for the first 24 hours,” said Cam Winton, a lawyer and resident of the Lowry Hill neighborhood in Minneapolis. “People would compare videos of sightings and see blood trails from where the mountain lion had captured its prey, and then we moved into the second 24 hours.” 

That’s when concerns for the safety of their children and pets settled in. The worry didn’t last long because 72 hours after the cougar’s first sighting, the big cat met its demise on I-394 near Theodore Wirth Parkway.  

“It was hit by a vehicle,” Winton said. “The mountain lion perished, and that’s when a whole bunch of people wanted to put a happier ending on the story.”

Enter Meadow Kouffeld, a wildlife biologist and taxidermist who lives in Grand Rapids. After the neighborhood and the Department of Natural Resources found the money to pay for the animal’s preservation, she started work on the project.

Minnesotans find cougars fascinating, Kouffeld said, even though the DNR reports more than 100 sightings of the animal in the state since 2004. But there’s also another reason she wanted to get involved.

“It tells an important story of roadkill mortality and the impacts on wildlife,” Kouffeld said.

The cougar’s roots likely trace back to the extended Black Hills Mountain range in Wyoming, she said. But he was discovered in the Pine Regions of Nebraska.  At about 14 weeks of age, this male cougar was tagged as NE-132 by local biologists.

Over the last two years of the animal’s life, he traveled east to Minnesota, instead of west towards the Rocky Mountains, where he likely would have had a better chance at finding room to roam and a suitable mate.  

“If they head east, they are probably not going to find a female,” Kouffeld added. “They will continue to move until they are either killed [or] they turn around and come back.”  

Kouffeld estimates that this cougar lived just over two years before its life was cut short after being hit by a car. The collision didn’t make the assignment easy — it took over a year and a half to sort through broken bones and assemble a framework out of foam, molding clay and plastic. In the end, she had the creative freedom to pose the cougar in its natural, stealthy state.   

“Very rarely do you see an animal in an aggressive or dynamic pose, and if they are, it’s a very brief moment and a very relatively rare part of their day-to-day life,” Kouffeld said. “When you see lions, they’re walking because they’re moving, it’s more of a natural pose for this animal. It’s non-threatening. I just felt like it was realistic and would also tell the story of this animal moving across the country.”  

While on display, visitors will also be able to see signs of how the cougar died. Kouffeld didn’t try to hide abrasions suffered by the animal.

“We debated whether or not we would cover that, but I think that it was important, in the end, to retain that part of the story,” Kouffeld said.

Beginning April 26, the cougar will be on display at Kenwood Rec Center in Minneapolis. Later, it will be moved to the Carl W. Kroening Nature Center, a part of the North Mississippi Regional Park in Minneapolis.

“Community members rallied together to ‘pass the hat’ and put money in to pay for some of the expenditures,” said Winton.

He said the taxidermy cost about $11,700. Winton and his community raised about one-third of the funds, while the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board paid for the rest.  

“What taxidermy is about is preserving a memory or kind of the essence of an animal,” said Kouffeld. “Especially when it comes to museums, animals help build a relationship with people who may not see them otherwise.”

Correction (April 13, 2025): An earlier version of this story misstated Meadow Kouffeld's name. The story has been corrected.

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