Gary Shattuck was driving home from a day of errands Saturday when he saw a large feline walking alongside the road. At first he thought it was a bobcat or even a cheetah. But it turned out to be something even rarer - an endangered Canada lynx strutting down the rural road in Shrewsbury, Vt.

The sighting is the first confirmed in Vermont since 2018, according to a statement from wildlife biologist Brehan Furfey of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

Shattuck told The Washington Post that he was about 10 feet away from the lynx when he saw it Saturday at 6:30 p.m. “It looked malnourished but didn’t make it sound. It didn’t even acknowledge or look at me,” he said.

Adult Canada lynx range from 2½ to 3 feet long and can weigh between 15 to 30 pounds, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Shattuck said he spoke to the lynx from the safety of his car - “Hey, are you okay?” - but although the animal’s ears perked up it just kept walking. “I’ll leave you alone, have a good night. So long,” Shattuck told the lynx before going home.

“I've lived here almost 50 years. I've never seen anything like that,” Shattuck, 73, said.

He took a short video of the animal and sent it to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. “I was concerned [the animal] looked far too thin,” he told them. He said a few of his neighbors also spotted the wildcat.

“Canada lynx are endangered in Vermont and threatened nationally,” said Furfey. “That makes any verifiable lynx sighting in our state important.”

The animal’s wild breeding populations are mainly located in northern Maine, northern New Hampshire, northeastern Minnesota, northwestern Montana, northern Idaho, north-central Washington and western Colorado, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The lynx is similar to a bobcat but can be identified by its long black ear tufts and short black-tipped tail. It also has large paws and long hind legs, which helps it hunt snowshoe hares in snowy conditions.

Furfey believes the lynx was a male traveling through the area in search of its own territory, a behavior known as “dispersing.” Because Canada lynx can travel long distances at high speed, Furfey said the lynx Shattuck saw is no longer in Vermont.

“Although this lynx appears to be on the thinner side, its calm behavior around passing cars as reported by observers is not unusual for a dispersing individual,” Furfey said. “This lynx was probably just focused on finding food in an area where hares are not abundant and on avoiding competition with bobcats and fishers while passing through southern Vermont.”