The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: HappyHippy on May 21, 2011, 08:41:46 pm
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I'm not normally one to catch the news snippets on AOL, but this one caught my eye. http://travel.aol.co.uk/2011/05/21/forget-the-monster-big-cat-terrorising-loch-ness-locals/ (http://travel.aol.co.uk/2011/05/21/forget-the-monster-big-cat-terrorising-loch-ness-locals/)
I know there are loads of big cat sightings all round the country and they can't all be faked or imagined ;) Anybody know anything about this one ? Or anybody on here seen a 'big cat' ? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Karen :wave:
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yep, at night whilst lamping, a pair of big green eyes near the edge of the field and the dogs pooped themselves and did a runner. next day went back to the samearea and found loads of sheep bones hidden deep in the gorse along with prints and spoor. this was last year. i think theyre not uncommon.
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There have been a few sightings in Fife. I saw one casually walking past my kitchen window - it honestly looked like a black Kellas cat you only see stuffed in the museum (not the size of a panther at all but at least twice the size of a domestic cat)! My own cat just watched him from the window sill equally puzzled! You actually think you must have been dreaming after a sighting like that. A friend saw one once disappearing into Ladybank forest. :cat: :&>
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We had several sightings around us, and for nights dogs in the wee village were upset, and bins and trees were found with long deep scores in them and a dead sheep was found hanging from a tree :-\
have also seen foot prints whilst stalking with dad
again we are in fife just south of kerstin
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I think some people are on drugs.
There is no sound evidence of any big cats in the UK. It's all been claimed sighting and hearsay. Can you honestly say, a small over crowded country the size of Britain, with a population of about 70 million has big cats living in just about every county. All counties have some claims. There may be a few in cloud cuckoo land or one or two in La La land, but Britain............no chance.
PS I have fairies at the end of my garden though I've seen them, prove me wrong. Shall I set up a bulls**t website with pseudo proof and pictures ::)
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::)There's always one, isn't there?
I have seen big cats, and evidence of them, and I know others who have too.
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Yeah AO ;D
I do think it's a possibility, after all there's bound to have been break-out's from private collections that someone's not reported for fear of prosecution - so it's definately not imposible.
I remembered the story about the sheep in the tree when I read this and couldn't remember where I'd heard it, thanks Cameron.
It's making interesting reading anyway, whether fact or fiction, anyone else got a story ? (or are you all away smokin' your crack pipes ;) :D)
Karen :wave:
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I agree that there are bound to have been some escapes from 'private collections' so try to be open-minded.
Having said which, I know that in dusk or dawn light sizes can appear magnified. And it's a fact that everywhere I have lived there's been a 'Beast of <here>' story with sightings since I moved in ... since I moved in with my very large domestic black cat Jacob. Some of the pics I have seen have not looked like domestic moggies - long hooked tail, for instance - and they are more convincing to me. The pic in the story this topic referred to looks very very like my cat Jacob. (But we don't live near Loch Ness so it must be a relative ;))
Poor Jacob died yesterday so maybe the Beast of Cumbria will go quiet...
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I know what I saw and it was 7 in the morning - no drink or similar for me at this time of the day ;D
as I said it looked like a very large black wild cat with a different shaped head, not the lovely fluffy and round head of a house cat. I would not compare it to a panther but maybe the original wild cats we see in the museum are not as extinct as we think? :&>
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I'm sure a lot of the sightings are spurious - but I seem to remember a documentary thing, years ago, presented by the Tomorrows World presenter Maggie Philbin(?) about the sightings in Scotland where they actually caught one, which turned out to be a domestic cat / scottish wildcat cross, and was larger than either species (german shepherd size?) and black and female - and for some reason didn't live long in captivity.
Does anyone else remember that or am I imagining things?
mab
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We lived in Woodhouse Eaves for a while (posh place) and full of excentrics ::) Steve was out in our tiny garden that backed onto our allotment and our neighbour (Posh and excentric) leaned out of her bedroom window and shouted to Steve that there was a big cat in the allotment that she could see only from her window!!!, needless to say, when I popped out to look she popped back in and said no more :o (come up here and look at the big
*ussy cat, ::) )
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I believe that these big cats do exist, i have not seen any yet, other than on telly.
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I think some people are on drugs.
There is no sound evidence of any big cats in the UK. It's all been claimed sighting and hearsay. Can you honestly say, a small over crowded country the size of Britain, with a population of about 70 million has big cats living in just about every county. All counties have some claims. There may be a few in cloud cuckoo land or one or two in La La land, but Britain............no chance.
PS I have fairies at the end of my garden though I've seen them, prove me wrong. Shall I set up a bulls**t website with pseudo proof and pictures ::)
And WE have a MONSTER!!!
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I do not know about Loch Ness. However, I did see something 'different' when on holiday in Cornwall. It was early morning and we were walking down a country lane when I saw a dog sized animal, first I thought it was a lab but it walked strangely and had a very weird tail. We did not have a 'handy' camera and when it went over a style we were not able to follow. OH saw it too and we were convinced it was not a 'big cat' or the 'beast of Bodmin' but it was strange in the way it walked and moved. Do not take drugs, were not on the way home from the pub and not expecting something strange. And by the way OH is a biologist and we both saw it and then said 'what was that?'
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Meant to add we have not reported this anywhere else
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And by the way OH is a biologist and we both saw it and then said 'what was that?'
El Chupacabra? ;)
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Perhaps the doubting Thomas can explain why dead sheep and carcasses are regulaly found up trees in the Radnor forrest, and our local gamekeeper has photographed huge paw prints in mud next to streams, a black panther is often seen by locals.
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no the OH does not eat goat :D. However, dog sized beast with cat features, walking pattern and tail was what we saw.
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Well here was a clear report of a white tiger -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-13491268 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-13491268)
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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As far back as 1973 there were reports of a large black cat-like beast in the area of Cannich, which is not far from Loch Ness. A certain Miss Chisolm saw one frequently, and was afraid it would eat her chickens. On one occasion, at least, she saw it leap an eight foot deer fence. The same lady said she saw smaller, spotted creatures as well, and on one occasion saw the large black one carrying a smaller spotted one.
Ted Noble, a farmer in the same locality, had sheep killed and consumed in typical cat fashion. He set a cage trap and caught a puma. Strangely, it seemed not to have a taste for raw rabbit meat, and prefered tinned cat food. A female, it seemed to have little fear of humans, and spent the rest of its days at Kincraig Wildlife Park before dying in its sleep. Ted Noble appeared to be the victim of a hoax, or perhaps the cat had been recently released in the area before entering the trap.
Further east, and a few years later, there were numerous sightings near Ardersier point, and on the A96 between Inverness and Nairn. Northern Constabulary had some of its officers involved in an investigation of those sightings, and one of the officers saw a large black panther-like cat, a report of which was recorded in the force's records at the time.
Others saw the same, or a similar animal in the locality of Ardersier. One of those people had been in Africa for many years and swore he saw a black leopard. Those, and many other documented sightings can be found in the first book by the author Di Francis, who has written several books to date, including one on the so-called Kellas cats. Her first book was called 'Cat Country' and was, at one time, available in my local library.
A few miles further east, at Fochabers, it is widely held that a black panther exists. My father's brother was a fishing ghillie there for twenty five years, and he had hens killed, and found large footprints in fresh snow. He tried to trap the creature, and nearly did, but it was, and occasionally is, still seen. Some of his gamekeeper friends know of it too.
A gamekeeper at Rothiemurchus shot a large cat some years ago, and apparently kept it in his freezer for a long time. I don't know if it still exists.
There have been sightings by all sorts of people, in many localities within fairly short distances of Inverness/Loch Ness for many years. Strathpeffer has very often been mentioned in relation to sightings.
Balbirnie park in Fife has long been associated with big black cats, as have Inverkeithing, Dalgety Bay, and Aberdour, in the past. I saw a large dark-grey coloured cat near Dalgety Bay and, when I asked two people at the side of the road what they had been looking at, before I arrived, they said "it looked like a large cat".
There have been several sightings near Arbroath over the last ten years or so, with people such as a delivery driver, farm workers, horse riders, and factory workers among those who say they've seen a large black panther. One locality, a wood near my home, has had three sightings by one person. When I asked another woman who lives near there if she had seen anything, she said, "Oh, did you not hear about my black panther encounter", and proceeded to tell me about hearing her pet cat 'screaming' outside her bedroom window one evening at dusk and, when she opened the curtains, she saw it on the window sill, hair on end, looking down at a 'black panther' on the patio. Her neighbour heard the commotion and simultaneously looked from her window to see the same thing. It turned and leapt a six foot garden fence. She lives within 300 yards of the woman mentioned above who had the three sightings in her wood.
There have been newspaper reports about unusual cats being sighted on the coast between Carnoustie and Arbroath. Descriptions of these animals would suggest that there is at least one black panther-like animal, and others which may be lynx, or serval-like, often with tufted ears and a bob tail and spotted coat.
We had a Suffolk ewe at work, which was heavy in lamb, found dead, with the flesh eaten neatly off the uppermost side of its face. The area around the eaten part had been stripped of its hair, and there was lots of little tufts of facial hair on the ground around the ewe's head. There were no signs of a struggle, other than the marks on the grass which are to be expected when a sheep is down and unable to get up...that is a worn area where the rear legs have been moving. There was the usual heap of dung which you'd expect from a sheep which has been down a while, none of which had been disturbed. Behind the carcase, there was an area of flattened grass, as if a large animal had been lying partly across the ewe's shoulders and neck as it fed.
The predator had obviously been disturbed by the arrival of an employee, who said the ewe was still warm when he found it. I later visited the sight and inspected the field boundary. I found scratch marks on a corner fence strainer, and I believe they were left there by the animal as it exited the field at the corner with the woodland. The field boundary is mains electric fencing, and leaping out at the strainer would be a natural way for a large animal to leave that field. Later, I also found a large scat with deer hair in it. Unfortunately this was discarded in error by another employee before it could be sent for analysis. The ewe, unfortunately, was collected by the knacker before I could inspect it for marks and wounds.
These large cats will have large territories. There may be weeks or months between their visits to some parts of those territories, so any sightings of them will be intermittent and rare. They are very good at concealing themselves too, which means that many people are unaware of their presence. I remember seeing a piece of film shot in America, where some kids were being video filmed by a family member as they played in a suburban garden. The camera operator started to zoom in on the chain link fence boundary of the garden, and it became apparent that there was a puma lying in the bottom of the hedge just outside the fence. It was almost impossible to see, but it was within ten yards of the people, and very much at ease there.
I have seen a large black cat on the road at night. One person I know says he saw two on the A9 near Dunkeld, at night, and another person told me she saw two in a playpark at about 5am one morning. Recently, during the last spell of lying snow, at first light, and at about 150yds, I saw two very dark coloured creatures running across an open area between two woods. They had long tails...much longer than anything else I have seen, and blunt faces. They were bigger than foxes, and covered the ground in a totally different manner, moving in graceful leaps and bounds. I would have said they were playing as they went. I had just fed my horses and was heading back to take the kids to school. It was snowing heavily at the time, so by the time I was able to get back there and inspect the area, it was impossible to make anything of it. Some years ago I found some black hair on a barbed wire fence. I thought it belonged to a neighbouring farmer's dog, but he later told me his dog never went there. Unfortunately I did not collect that hair at the time. Lots of opportunities to collect such evidence must be missed frequently by many people, owing to various circumstances.
Many people have never seen a fox, or a badger, or an otter...but we all know they exist in Britain. When I can afford it, I am going to buy one of those remote cameras which record by infra red light and can be secreted and left for a month.