Ballybogy, Co. Antrim, N. Ireland, 2003

Big cat panic gripped north Antrim after a 10-year-old girl, Jodie McFarland, spotted a large brown cat near Port-rush in early August 2003. Further sight-ings followed within hours, and a police search was launched. A few days later, large paw prints were found beside a reservoir near Bush-mills and identified by Belfast Zoo as those of a puma or mountain lion-type cat.

The media swooped, but disagreed over the details: between 20 and 50 further sight-ings were reported; between four and six sheep (including a pedigree ram at Castlecat) were killed. While descriptions of the animal varied wildly, farmers united in calling for it to be shot, and many parents kept their children inside. Strangely, only one blurry photo of the creature itself was ever obtained.

On 24 September, after a six-week hunt, the carcasses of two calves were found near Ballybogy, and the dawn-to-dusk ‘Oper-ation Big Cat’ was launched. Army and police marksmen, USPCA experts, and a spotter plane with heat-seeking infra-red equipment swept the area, but still the creature was not found.

The next day, a USPCA spokes-man revealed that there were actually not one but two big cats roaming the Causeway Coast – a private collector had released a sandy-coloured puma and a black panther into the area in July – but that the hunt would now be scaled down as the animals had already turned feral and could live undetected in the area for years. Further sightings and attacks on livestock, however, continued to be reported for several months.

Craigdhu, Ayrshire, 2003

Ayshire big cats clearly have a more sophisticated palate than their southern cousins, who are generally presumed to make do on staples like sheep, deer and chickens. In May 2003 a 5ft rhea was killed at Craigdhu craft workshop, near Loudoun Kirk. One of a pair kept by Steven and Ingrid Calton, Chris (as the bird was known) was killed during the night by an unknown predator, who left two fang marks on its victim’s neck and tore chucks of flesh from its body; Tina, Chris’s mate, escaped by jumping over a fence into an adjoining field. The Carltons suspected the attack was the work of a big cat, as Mrs Carlton had seen a large cat-like creature on their land a few weeks previously, and the couple found large paw prints in the pen where the rheas were kept on the morning after Chris was killed. Several other sightings were reported in the area in the weeks around Chris’s death, and several people claimed to have seen paw prints. Tina is said to be doing well, though she is “rather lonely”.

Hemingby, Lincolnshire, 2003

Retired couple Sandy and Julie Richardson, from Hemingby, near Horncastle, captured what seems conclusive proof of a big cat prowling Lincolnshire. They had spotted a paw print “the size of a tea plate” outside their back door the preceding year, but their first actual sighting was in July 2003, in their garden - a garden which backs onto fields and is strewn with abandoned cars and caravans. A few days later, Mr Richardson went into one of the caravans, looking for a new spring for his grass cutter. “I turned around and there it was, sitting on a mattress, staring at me from just a few feet away. It was about four feet long, plus the head and tail... It was black, with yellowy-orange eyes which were evil to look at, totally dead and soulless. It bared its four big yellowy-brown teeth but didn’t make a noise. Then it started walking towards me. Its body was sleek and very well-muscled. It kind of rippled.” He called the police, who turned up armed with shotguns and tranquiliser darts but failed to find the beast.

A few days later, however, it reappeared, and Mr Richardson caught it on video and sent the footage to the wildlife officer for Lincolnshire Police, Nigel Lound. The couple also sent hairs they found to two laboratories - DNA Bioscience, and RGJL, in the States. All analyses confirmed that the cat they’d seen was indeed an animal of the genus panthera. According to Pc Lound: “This is concrete proof, as far as we are concerned.”

The Richardsons’ was part of a wave of sightings that year possibly triggered by a £100 reward offered by the Horncastle News to anyone who could prove big cats roamed the area; the Richardsons successfully claimed the prize money.

RAF St Mawgans, Cornwall, England, 2004

Tales of big cats have long swirled across Bodmin Moor, with supposed sightings and attacks on sheep dating back decades. But in early April 2004, it appeared that the Beast might have taken refuge at a nearby airbase. Three separate reports were filed at RAF St Mawgan by servicemen on night training exercises, who claimed to have seen a black cat, 5–6ft (1.5–1.8m) in length, with a puma- or panther-like head.

Zoologists were drafted in to identify the creature and determine how frequently it was visiting the site, and specialist surveillance equipment, including motion detectors and night vision equipment – some of it supplied by the military itself – was set up. The Beast, however, remained elusive, and the RAF approached a professional tracker, ‘Max’, to patrol the site in a survey planned to last a few weeks. Max had grown up in a Zimbabwe village and learnt from local Ngoni barefoot trackers; as an adult, he spent time with Navajo Indian trackers in the US, and established Shadowhawk, a company teaching foreign armies man-tracking skills. Yet despite his experience, high-tech equipment, and boundless confidence, the trail, apparently, went cold: apart from 2.5in (6cm)-diameter paw prints left in a sand trap, no further sightings or evidence were reported.

Burford, Oxfordshire, 2005

In January 2005, a young blackbuck gazelle at Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens in Burford, Oxfordshire, was savaged and partially eaten. The nature of its injuries - particularly the fact that its throat had been ripped out - suggested to park keepers that it had been attacked by a big cat; the owner, Reggie Heyworth, offered a £5,000 reward to anybody who could catch the beast alive.

After the gazelle’s death there was a rush of sightings: livestock were killed and local farmers reported seeing a large black beast prowing their land. Foxbury farmer Colin Dawes saw the creature kill three of his sheep and then run away; his neighbour saw it on the Westwell to Burford Road two weeks previously. Large paw prints without claw marks were spotted in various locations, including near the perimeter of RAF Brize Norton; the beast was seemingly captured on film, pricking the interest of the nationals; and John Collinson, 78, who until the 1970s worked as a warden at the Ugalla Game Reserve in western Tanzania, attempted to track the creature down. Despite all this, however, and the empty enclosure waiting for it at the park, by Easter when Heyworth’s offer ran out the beast had still not been caught.

PC Ray Hamilton, wildlife crime officer at Thames Valley Police, was not surprised by the reports of sightings, and argued for a simple case of misidentification: “We’ve had sightings of everything you could imagine - pink flamingoes, lions, dingos, wolves and even a giant anteater in Pangbourne.”

BBC News, 17 Mar; D. Mail, 22 Mar; Western D. Press, 30 Mar; Oxford Mail, 28 Apr 2005

Sydenham, Greater London, 2005

Former soldier Anthony Holder, 36, was at the bottom of his Sydenham back garden at around 2am one March morning in 2005, looking for the family’s mewling pet cat. To his astonishment, when he discovered her she wasn’t being attacked by a fox as he had feared; rather, her assailant was a a 3ft tall, 5ft long black cat. “All of a sudden I see this big black thing pouncing at me, knocked me flying. I was just stunned with it all. I just didn’t know where I was, and the next thing there was this big black figure on my chest,” remembered the 6ft, 15st Mr Holder. “I could see these huge teeth and the whites of its eyes just inches from my face. It was snarling and growling, and I really believed it was trying to do some serious damage.” Luckily, he managed to wrest himself free of the creature, and return to the house, where his 11-year-old daughter, Ashleigh, who had witnessed the whole attack, was waiting. He rang the police who turned up with an armed response unit and they attempted to capture the creature - without success, though one of the officers did report seeing a Labrador-sized black animal at the scene.

Mr Holder escaped the attack with scratches and bruising, but local residents were, unsurprisingly, fearful. Several more sightings were reported in the area, and a local school temporarily refused to let any of its pupils leave the premises alone.

Nairn Golf Club, Highlands, 2005

The Wild Beasts Trust admitted on 30 January, 2005, that a branch of the organisation - which is committed to the reintroduction of Britain’s extinct species back into the wild - could be responsible for a series of big cat sightings in the Highlands. Lady golfers spotted what they thought was a lion on the course at Nairn, but Peter Clarke, the Trust’s spokesman (and a former environment policy adviser to the Thatcher government) said: “I don’t think it was a lion but we have people up there who want to reintroduce the lynx. I’m not saying it was them, but who knows? I have also seen reports about wolverines being restored to the hills in Aviemore.”

The organisation, which concentrates its energies on Scotland, meets in secret due to the illegal nature of many of its goals. According to its website, http://wildbeaststrust.blogspot.com/, candidate species for reintroduction “range from the grey whale to the dormouse, carnivore to herbivore. We include the wolf, the lynx, the bear, the wolverine, the beaver, the moose, the boar, the walrus, the bison, the mouflon, the lemming, the dormouse and one non-mammal - the sturgeon.” “What we’re doing,” says Clarke, “is bringing the beasties back.”

The group hit the news again last autumn when Clarke spoke of plans to release six lynxes and two wolves from a property in the Borders back into the wild. “It is an important or subtle claim,” he explains, “but I think the howl of a wolf pack over the Cheviots or the possibility of seeing a lynx on the Eildons transforms the souls of these locations.” Scotland’s lady golfers might not be so enthusiastic.

Whitmoor Common, Surrey, 2005

A pair of dogs were being taken for a walk on Whitmoor Common, near Guildford, Surrey, when they spotted a large sandy-coloured, cat-like animal and chased it up a tree. Their owner proceeded to ring Surrey Wildlife Trust ranger Mark Havler, who contacted the fire brigade and the RSPCA. Firefighters duly turned up and attempted to catch the creature but, in the best traditions of its Houdini-esque ilk, the beast managed to escape.
Two weeks later, a similar-looking animal was captured on video at nearby Winkworth Arboretum by Harry Fowler; on the video you can hear a woman cry, “It’s huge!”. The footage was given to Mr Havler, who opined: “It’s hard to say what it is. If you have preconceived ideas, it is easy to say it is a lynx.”

Following these sightings, the local paper received the usual slew of calls describing both recent encounters with big cats and more distant memories never reported at the time for fear of ridicule. Tales of a ‘Surrey Puma’ have circulated in the area since the early 1960s, encouraging various entertaining headlines, including “Puma could solve deer problem” and “I trod on puma’s tail - and hit its nose”.


Baglan, nr Port Talbot, South Wales, 2005

After some 30 years of local sightings, the ‘Beast of Baglan’ made the national newspapers and gained a greater air of reality in 2005. The story began in October, when a goat was apparently savaged to death in its enclosure at the rear of the owner’s property at Baglan, high above Port Talbot. Police took the attack seriously and decided that the unfortunate goat’s body should be exhumed and its wounds examined by experts in an attempt to establish cause of death. In the event, the goat’s carcass was too badly decomposed to allow tests to be carried out.

Normally, this would have been the end of the affair, but a few weeks later an off-duty police-man sighted the elusive ABC for himself in an area of Baglan known as Ladies Walk. Port Talbot police officers visited the scene, found large prints and managed to get a plaster cast of one of them. By early December, the creature’s identity had apparently been established by DNA tests on hairs obtained from the prints: experts claimed the ‘Beast’ was a mountain lion or puma and that the forestry land surrounding Port Talbot was a perfect habitat. The cold weather had perhaps forced the big cat into the surrounding villages to prey on sheep and, on this occasion, a goat. Where the cat had come from was another question – although Prof. Alayne Street-Perrott of Swansea University’s Exotic Big Cat Group wondered if it could be a descendant of escapees from Victorian menageries. Other reports suggested that Men in Black from DEFRA had ‘removed’ the cast and hairs for further analysis and that the Welsh Assembly had denied the police’s findings.

Markinch, Fife, Scotland, 2006

After several sightings of an unidentified creature on the Balbirnie Estate near Glenrothes, Fife residents were sure that a big cat – swiftly dubbed the ‘Beast of Balbirnie’ – prowled among them. The discovery by local police of a large pawprint in the autumn of 2005 seemed to confirm the presence of an ABC, and Fife Constabulary wildlife officer PC Mark Maylin advised any member of the public who encountered the beast to “back away slowly and make yourself look as large as possible”.

In January 2006, fear turned to relief (and some media mirth) when it was claimed that the ‘Beast’ was no more than a St Bernard dog visiting from far-off Berk-shire, described by his owner as “a big softie”. The family in question maintained that the dog’s print matched exactly that found on the estate, a view backed up by Andrew Kitchener, curator for mammals and birds at the National Museum of Scotland.

But then the story took another twist in February – after two further sightings of a large black cat – when zoological examination of the cast of the pawprint eliminated the possibility that the ‘Beast’ was a dog. PC Maylin announced that: “Experts were as certain as they could be that it was an exotic cat. They couldn’t identify the species, but due to reports of sightings we’ve had about a large black cat, it’s almost certain to be a black leopard.”