It's a photo that has been shared dozens of times on social media: a mountain lion lying down on someone's front porch.
The post originated in a Maumelle neighborhood watch group.
A neighbor alleged the mountain lion had been spotted sprawled out on someone's front porch, earlier in the week, near the country club. We spoke with Mike Steely, a co-founder at Vocool technologies, to see if the image was photoshopped.
"Looking at the image itself, this is definitely something that is a real image. It's not something that looks like it has been photoshopped together, but if you do a quick Google search on the image itself, the main problem is it's not an image that was shot today,” he said.
It's so simple it almost sounds cynical, but the answer to where this picture came from begins and ends with Google.
"It's an image that, if you go back and look at the history of it, you can find it on several websites, you can find it on several social posts,” he explained. “Ultimately it leads back to an article in Utah about somebody who really did have a mountain lion on their porch. It's just not today and not in Arkansas."
Rhett Riding took the photo in his Utah neighborhood back in 2016. Meaning we can verify that this claim is false.
Our finding though, comes after hundreds of people saw and likely believed the post.
"In this case, I think at worst-case scenario, your dog or child may not get to go out in the front yard as much, but yes, people who post things without doing the research and just kind of knee-jerk post onto Facebook, it can definitely scare people,” Steely explained of the possible impact, adding it can land you in legal trouble as well. "Companies now do use this same process in an automated-fashion to find copyright violations and they will send attorney letters and ultimately take you to court over using the image if you don't have the rights to it."
Even if the mountain lion actually was in Arkansas, Jim Harris with Arkansas Game and Fish said they may see you, but you won't see them.
"Fourteen sightings in eight years tells you it's kind of a needle-in-the-haystack odds," Harris said.
So, if you see this post, just know it's not in Arkansas, but it happened in Utah.