Mystery Erisman bones

Earlier this month and in September, I kept hearing persistent rumors about a cougar haunting the area between two local roads that border a pair of my favorite refuges, Babcock Ridge and Erisman Woodlands. I really wanted to explore both at night on the rare times it rained, because I really wanted to try to spot and photograph courting Marbled Salamanders. Before the cougar speculations, I had no qualms about trekking into either preserve after dark. There were coyotes, to be sure, but they tend to run rather than attack, and about the only other possible trouble, besides trespassing raccoon hunters, would be getting trampled, or, worse, gored by a rutting buck deer (or a fleeing doe). There was, however, something chilling about the presence of a big cat in the woods—and no longer being on top of the food chain. When the rumors finally faded—the cougar, if it was ever there in the first place, was likely a young male and constantly on the move—I went back to the woods, at least, during the day. On the Erisman trail, I found a collection of reasonably fresh bones: a pretty complete spine and a pelvis. The skull was nowhere to be found so, short of saying the skeleton may have once supported an animal on the order of a raccoon, possum, or house cat, I can't provide an identity of the prey... or the predator.