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26-01-2004, 04:04 AM

The message
from emon (Rhiannon S) contains these words:
Subject: Strawberries
From: Jaques d'Alltrades
Date: 25/01/2004 16:33 GMT Standard Time
Message-id:

That was the patch of weather we saw the big cat tracks in the snow.

Ooooh, let me get my hot chocolate and marshmallows and you can tell
us about
that too

)

I love a scarey big cat story. I've only ever seen one fleetingly.

Wasn't particularly scary. Winter of 1978/9. Snow everywhere. I'd broken
my kneecap in Essex (one-point landing on a block of concrete while
carrying a heavy bumper and towbar) and we had to get me back to Norfolk
to feed my rabbis.

Unsuitably plastered by some GP at the local hospital (You should have
seen the fuss the Norfolk & Norwich technician made!) I couldn't drive
my Moggy 1000 van, and I couldn't carry buckets in that state either, so
as the Essex schools were only running examination year classes (tanker
drivers' strike) I grabbed a lad I knew and two of my friends drove us
and my van up there.

Later, still unable to drive the van we walked into the nearest town to
do some shopping. We took the back route in because it was shorter.
There wasn't even a tyre-track: the road was quiet at the best of times,
and we came upon a line of prints in the middle of the road, about the
size of a ginger-nut.

Odd, distinctly odd.

"Steven, you're a Scout: what would you say those were?"

"Dog. *BIG* dog."

"Nope. If they'd been dog tracks you'd see the clawmarks, especially in
this depth of snow."

He had another look. "Well, what are they then?"

"Cat. They're rounder than a dog's, too."

He allowed this to sink in and then said: "****ing big moggy!"

We followed them for a bit and they went through a gap in the hedge and
continued beside it, and at the next gap returned to the road and then
crossed over, disappearing into some woodland, where we did not try to
follow.

I got some plaster of paris in the town, meaning to mix it with snow and
see if I could get a cast of one, but they had melted too much on our
return.

I wrote to someone I was at school with, Barry Paine, who was a BBC
wildlife producer, and he wrote back to say that such reports were not
uncommon, indeed, had been so for centuries. It is believed by some
authorities that there may be an indiginous lynx-sized wild cat which
was nocturnal and very shy.

However, I would have said by the stride that this animal was more
leopard-sized.

I saw a black panther-like animal one foggy night some years later, and
about ten miles from where the prints were, and (probably) the same
animal was seen by the local head keeper, his wife and his underkeeper
while out lamping for foxes one night, about a mile from that spot.

--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/