Cougar, Puma, Panther, Mountain lion in Michigan?

Hi folks,
Well I have just had my reality shaken pretty good. What got me started on this is 2 things:
1. There is an absence of the usual pesky mammal population around our house this spring-skunks, possums, coons.
2. There was a rumor years ago of a large cat roaming about 15 miles from our house.
So in trying to figure out where our nuisance wildlife is I happened upon a couple of tracking sites for the big cat. My eyes were opened pretty wide upon reading these sites and the testimonials of the contributers. While Lapeer County is not a hot spot, Genessee and Oakland are. I won't get into the DNR's refusal to admit they exist in Michigan. The reasons seem very logical given our current quagmire called the federal government, BUT since most Michiganders aren't used to dealing with anything worse than a pesky coon when out in nature, I think it only prudent that we as the citizenry be informed that yes, indeed, we might actually happen upon a big cat while out and about and if we think we did see one sometime but shook our head and said no, chances are we did see one. It would seem our big cat population is pretty healthy and growing. Growing enough that there have been 2 killed on the highway in the last couple of years.

By the way, Mountain lion, puma, black panther and cougar are all referring to the same animal. There have been many sightings of black cougars around Michigan. That is where the word panther comes in. No, our cats would not be the same as the ones from south of the border, but many of our big cat sightings appear to be black cats.

As if this isn't enough, a dance parent came in last night with late breaking news. It seems a mother bear and cubs were spotted near the grocery store in town. Now the thumb of Michigan is not known for huge mammals because of all the farm land, but who knows? The store is just a short hop and skip from a rather wild muck field area that is still pretty untouched by people, full of deer and has a couple of huge berry farms. I assume this sighting was seen from a long distance. So while it was obviously a large animal family, it could also have been big cats.
One way or another our little farm community has some large furry neighbors and they aren't deer.