Cougar cubs have not been documented in Michigan in over 100 years, but state biologists can confirm recent photos officially ended the dry spell. On March 13, Michigan Department of Natural Resources released a trio of images that show a pair of tiny cougars roaming a snowy portion of the Upper Peninsula in Ontonagon County.

The 7- to 9-week-old cubs were seen without their mother on March 6 in the U.P. They were hunted out of existence in the state in the early 1900s.

The news Thursday that cougar cubs had turned up in the Upper Peninsula — Michigan’s first confirmed wild cubs in more than a century — sparked both elation and worry. The elation came that a female cougar may have actually made the 900-plus-miles journey from most likely the Black Hills of South Dakota to end