CALEDONIA, Wis. -- Anna Lashley can't forget her surprise when she looked out her kitchen window in Caledonia three years ago and saw a big cat.

She said she called the zoo, but they hadn't lost one. She's convinced the animal was a cougar, also known as a mountain lion, and she said she's seen a number of them stop in her yard since then, most recently on March 28.

The cougar was wiped out in most of the eastern U.S. a century ago, but the cats have been migrating back from the Black Hills of South Dakota into Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Wisconsin game managers receive scores of reports of sightings each year and try to determine which ones are real.

So far, just two cougars have been confirmed in Wisconsin.