Along the lines of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster comes a new animal mystery. This one is here in the nation's capital.
The question this time: Were those two large, dark animals spotted in a field near the Fort Totten Metro Station Wednesday afternoon black bears?
Fort Totten is the transfer point for the Green and Red Line trains where thousands of commuters spend part of their workdays. And they see all kinds of things.
"I know there are some wild critters," says Metro rider Victor Akosile. "But a black bear? That's something out of a story you hear."
This story comes to us from Dale Parker. He was on the platform Wednesday when he and other commuters saw something unusual out in a field next to the station. He snapped a photo. He put it on Twitter. We saw it and gave Parker a call.
"They looked like bears," Parker tells us from his home in Silver Spring. "There were two of them. And they were starting to walk toward each other. But they can't be cats. They were too big."
Most Metro riders we asked at Fort Totten said they had never seen any bears in the area.
The property is national park land and the Park Service's natural resource manager for Rock Creek Park is skeptical. He says he has heard nothing about any bear sightings and finds it pretty unlikely one or more would wander their way into the city.
We emailed the photo to Dave Garshelis. He is an expert on black bears with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
"Could be a bear, could be a dog," Garshelis told us via Skype. "I live close to Duluth. It's a town of about 85,000 or something and there are bears that live in the city limits of Duluth. And they're comfortable there. So it's not unheard of that a bear comes into a big city. We have bears coming into the Twin Cities all the time. Obviously a little bit different, Washington D.C., but it's a possibility."
Perhaps they had heard about the baby panda just born at the National Zoo and came into the city for a visit.
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