Showing posts with label big cat attacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label big cat attacks. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Friends Wonder If Cougar Hurt Horses Near Austin, Minn.
April 29, 2011 10:18 PM
By Lindsey Seavert, WCCO-TV
AUSTIN, Minn. (AP) – A group of friends wonders whether a cougar was responsible for injuries suffered by some horses in rural Austin.
The alleged attack happened on April 20 northwest of Austin. Jolene Morrison noticed her horse, Sapphire, had a bad limp, numerous gashes and missing hair. The mare’s 2-year-old colt also was hurt.
Homeowner Glenn Ward, who boards the horses, tells the Austin Daily Herald he’s certain it’s a cougar. Ward says something would have had to jump the fence to get in.
DNR officials and the Freeborn County sheriff’s office haven’t been able to prove what caused the horses’ wounds. The DNR says it’s unlikely it’s a cougar.
Meanwhile, Ward and Morrison are keeping the horses locked in the barn until they think things are safe.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/04/29/friends-wonder-if-cougar-hurt-horses-near-austin-minn/
Grisly find as ‘big cat’ is caught on camera
 |
| The big cat pictured on camera near Embo |
Published: 29 April, 2011
A GRISLY find in Ross-shire and an intriguing image captured on camera has further fuelled speculation that a big cat is on the prowl.
The sighting of a large, cat-like beast stopped Tain sisters Lisa and Alana Sydenham in their tracks as they were out driving near Embo on Wednesday night.
Meanwhile on the Black Isle, the stripped-to-the-bone remains of a deer and large paw prints in the mud left another landowner pondering the possibility that a big cat is responsible.
The latest revelations follow last week’s exclusive Ross-shire Journal story in which Easter Ross farmer George Ross, of Rheguile Farm, spoke of the savaging of 18 of his sheep since the beginning of the year.
Lisa Sydenham (29), an administration and information technology student at Dornoch College, contacted the Journal yesterday after her sighting on Wednesday night. She had been driving with sister Alana (26) near Embo outside Dornoch when she caught sight of a large beast on the prowl.
Lisa, who snapped the black creature with the point-and-shoot digital camera she was carrying around 8.30pm on Wednesday night, told the Journal, “It was definitely not just a large domestic cat or dog.
“At first I thought it was a very large dog but from the way it was walking and the shape of its body I could tell that it was a big cat. It was quite a distance away over a field. My sister Alana and I were at first very surprised and then excited. I looked into it and found there had been another sighting in the area last September.
“It looked and moved like a cat.
“It spotted me and crouched down in the grass before walking off. We must have watched it for about five minutes in all.”
She speculated that changes in animal licensing laws some time ago had prompted the owners of some exotic animals to release them into the wild.
The Journal was also contacted yesterday by Black Isle-based Alison Kennedy, who lives near Culbokie. She stumbled across the remains of a deer on land she owns at Upper Braefindon on Monday night and is hoping for some expert analysis of distinctive paw prints found in the mud near the kill.
She told the Journal, “On returning to the spot on Tuesday there were signs that the carcass had been dragged further away and carried off, nothing remained but a severed leg. All other stories only show remains of savaged animals, but I have pictures of paw prints at the site of the attack and the very fresh, almost totally eaten carcass.
“I tried to get SAC vets to visit the site and confirm what might have killed the deer, but have had no response so far.
“If it was dogs, that in itself is very worrying, given the livestock in the area, but more so if it is a big cat.”
She said there were obvious signs of a struggle and the appearance that the deer had been dragged a significant distance during the apparent attack.
Chief Inspector Paul Eddington, who has several years’ experience as a police wildlife crime coordinator specialist under his belt, said there had been several very credible sightings of big cats in Ross-shire down the years.
He said too there had been several stories of exotic animals being released in the Highlands since the 1970s following changes in legislation surrounding what people are permitted to keep as pets.
There have also been documented instances of domesticated cats turning feral and breeding with wildcats.
Ch Insp Eddington also recalled the December 2008 report — first revealed by the Journal — of the attack on a 73-year-old Easter Ross woman convinced she had been mauled after disturbing a big cat near her home.
Pat McLeod, who lived in a remote cottage outside Alness, had required hospital treatment for cuts sustained in an attack the exact details of which remain a mystery. Police were sufficiently convinced to lay traps and issue a warning to the public to be vigilant.
Ch Insp Eddington said, “Anyone who sees something unusual is encouraged to contact us. There’s an issue of public safety to consider and also the wellbeing of any such creature. We have had a number of credible reports down the years and people can be assured they will always be taken at face value.”
(Link not supplied)
Friday, April 29, 2011
Town hunts for black panther preying on livestock
Joleen Chaney
Reporting KFOR
5:47 p.m. CDT, April 26, 2011
POCASSET, Okla. -- Some Oklahomans are on the hunt for what they are calling a black panther or mountain lion that has been spotted near several homes.
The creature has been reportedly seen near Pocasset in rural Grady County.
"It was about half grown, had a tail about 4 feet long and it was solid black," witness Russell Dahl said.
It has become quite the talk of the town after a few recent run-ins with people, including Dahl's neighbor who had an encounter while on an evening jog.
"It liked to scare her to death," he said.
The animal is said to have been roaming the area for decades.
Dahl said he questioned the creature's existence when his son described his sighting, but he quickly became a believer.
"I said, 'You saw a coyote.' Well, the next day I saw it and it wasn't no coyote," he said.
Officials at the Oklahoma State Department of Wildlife say they've had a definite increase in the number of calls they've gotten from people who say they've seen big cats after a mountain lion was captured in Tulsa over the weekend.
"Sometimes I think they might be seeing a bobcat, maybe even coyotes, once in a while dogs," Game Warden Ron Comer said. "You can't always believe what your eyes are telling you."
The latest sightings in this rural little town haven't only given the locals a bit of a scare, but some say the cats have gone after their cattle and pets.
Whatever it is, experts say it could be one of a number of different animals.
"I never try to tell anybody that they didn't see what they thought they saw, but the melanistic gene does not exist in the mountain lion or the pumas or panthers or whatever you want to call the north American big cat," Comer said.
The melanistic gene increases an animals dark pigmentation, turning the animal black.
Within the past few years, new laws have allowed people to kill mountain lions or big cats if they feel threatened.
However, now there is no open season to hunt the animals and it is illegal to do so.
As for the cat caught in Tulsa, wildlife officials believe it was a caged pet that somehow escaped from someone who was not licensed to have it.
http://www.kfor.com/news/local/kfor-news-hunt-for-panther-lion-prey-livestock-story,0,7227827.story
Friday, April 22, 2011
Fears for children from ‘big cat’
Mum frightened to leave her baby in garden after dog was attacked
By Mel Fairhurst
Published: 16/04/2011
A mother living near the home of the mythical Loch Ness Monster claims a real-life killing beast is on the rampage in the area – and warned it could be a threat to children.
Terrified Katrina Wallace says she is too frightened to leave her 12-week-old baby unattended in the garden after her dog was attacked and a lamb was killed by a big cat-like creature which is thought to be prowling woods near her Drumnadrochit home.
Mrs Wallace’s husband, James, 38, first spotted the animal in the family garden at Ancarraig House, Bunloit, and thought it was one of the couple’s two black labradors.
He said it was black with a long, cat-like tail similar to that of a puma or cougar.
Weeks later one of the family dogs, Breargh, was attacked in the garden.
Mrs Wallace said: “There was blood all around her eye and her hind leg was ripped to shreds. The vet said she had been dragged by an animal bigger than a dog.”
Following snow showers in March, large paw prints which measured 4.5in by 3in were photographed by the couple, and a couple of weeks ago, they were horrified to find a lamb from a neighbouring farm had been killed. It had a puncture wound in the back of its neck.
Mrs Wallace said: “The paw prints came from the woods towards the house. A friend of ours who does a lot of shooting and has tracked animals confirmed they were cat prints and a big one at that.
“If I could, I would move. I have been told by police not to scaremonger. They said they needed more DNA evidence, but what more evidence can we give? My children, aged 12 and 14, are terrified and none of us will go outside alone after dark – we go out in pairs with a torch.”
Mrs Wallace added: “This animal attacked my dog which was lucky to escape, but what chance would a child have against an animal like this when they cannot fight back?
“I want this to be taken seriously because children and walkers are at risk.
“We have heard other stories of sightings of one or two big cats – one farmer in Kiltarlity said he lost 20 sheep to two of them.
“I think it could be something to do with the big cats which were released in the 1970s, which may have been breeding every since.”
Northern Constabulary carried out an investigation into the big cat reports, and also looked into complaints from residents at nearby Invermoriston about marauding wild boar in the area.
A police spokeswoman said: “Neither big cats such as pumas, nor wild boars are protected wildlife. In the majority of cases, the animals would not approach to harm humans. They are not known for their aggressive behaviour unless they are young and threatened and even then, there would be few cases. However, if we felt there was a threat to public safety, we would take appropriate action.”
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2226731?UserKey=
By Mel Fairhurst
Published: 16/04/2011
A mother living near the home of the mythical Loch Ness Monster claims a real-life killing beast is on the rampage in the area – and warned it could be a threat to children.
Terrified Katrina Wallace says she is too frightened to leave her 12-week-old baby unattended in the garden after her dog was attacked and a lamb was killed by a big cat-like creature which is thought to be prowling woods near her Drumnadrochit home.
Mrs Wallace’s husband, James, 38, first spotted the animal in the family garden at Ancarraig House, Bunloit, and thought it was one of the couple’s two black labradors.
He said it was black with a long, cat-like tail similar to that of a puma or cougar.
Weeks later one of the family dogs, Breargh, was attacked in the garden.
Mrs Wallace said: “There was blood all around her eye and her hind leg was ripped to shreds. The vet said she had been dragged by an animal bigger than a dog.”
Following snow showers in March, large paw prints which measured 4.5in by 3in were photographed by the couple, and a couple of weeks ago, they were horrified to find a lamb from a neighbouring farm had been killed. It had a puncture wound in the back of its neck.
Mrs Wallace said: “The paw prints came from the woods towards the house. A friend of ours who does a lot of shooting and has tracked animals confirmed they were cat prints and a big one at that.
“If I could, I would move. I have been told by police not to scaremonger. They said they needed more DNA evidence, but what more evidence can we give? My children, aged 12 and 14, are terrified and none of us will go outside alone after dark – we go out in pairs with a torch.”
Mrs Wallace added: “This animal attacked my dog which was lucky to escape, but what chance would a child have against an animal like this when they cannot fight back?
“I want this to be taken seriously because children and walkers are at risk.
“We have heard other stories of sightings of one or two big cats – one farmer in Kiltarlity said he lost 20 sheep to two of them.
“I think it could be something to do with the big cats which were released in the 1970s, which may have been breeding every since.”
Northern Constabulary carried out an investigation into the big cat reports, and also looked into complaints from residents at nearby Invermoriston about marauding wild boar in the area.
A police spokeswoman said: “Neither big cats such as pumas, nor wild boars are protected wildlife. In the majority of cases, the animals would not approach to harm humans. They are not known for their aggressive behaviour unless they are young and threatened and even then, there would be few cases. However, if we felt there was a threat to public safety, we would take appropriate action.”
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2226731?UserKey=
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Big cat injures youth in Pilibhit
TNN | Apr 6, 2011, 01.37am IST
LUCKNOW: In another incident of man-animal conflict, a man was injured by a big cat in Pilibhit. But it is still not confirmed whether the man was attacked by a tiger or a leopard. However, the forest officials are trying to figure out the presence of the big cat in the area.
The incident came to light on Sunday evening when a 28-year old youth Pappu Kumar sustained few injuries in an encounter with a big cat. The incident took place in Chandiahazara village of Haripur range in Pilibhit forest division. The injured is a resident of Rahulnagar village situated close to Chandiahazara.
Haripur range has a forest area and the village where incident took place is situated on the periphery of the forest. The man got injuries on his forehead and hands. There is still a confusion if the man was attacked by a tiger or a leopard.
While the man who got injured said he saw a tiger, the forest officials said that they have not located any pugmarks in and around the area where incident happened. "We have searched the area and have not found any pugmarks," said VK Singh, DFO, Pilibhit.
The nature of the injury also shows that he might have been attacked by a leopard. The man was, however, admitted to the hospital immediately after the incident. When asked if there was any compensation also released to the man, DFO said that a proposal has been sent to the Chief Wildlife Warden (CWW) regarding the same.
The forest officials are also not running down the fact that the man could have been injured by a tiger. The team has been deputed in the area to figure out the movement of big cat in the area. Though in the past three days, forest team has not come across any big cat moving in the area.
Things do not end here only. There is another mismatch between the version of the injured and forest team at the spot. While the man said he was attacked by the feline in his village, forest staff found his clothing inside the forest area.
An almost similar incident was reported from Kakraha range of Katarniaghat. A man was injured in a wild attack. When contacted, DFO Katarniaghat, RK Singh, said, "It is not confirmed if the man was attacked by a leopard or any other animal." Kakraha range is still to send a report on the incident to the DFO.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Big-cat-injures-youth-in-Pilibhit/articleshow/7879035.cms
LUCKNOW: In another incident of man-animal conflict, a man was injured by a big cat in Pilibhit. But it is still not confirmed whether the man was attacked by a tiger or a leopard. However, the forest officials are trying to figure out the presence of the big cat in the area.
The incident came to light on Sunday evening when a 28-year old youth Pappu Kumar sustained few injuries in an encounter with a big cat. The incident took place in Chandiahazara village of Haripur range in Pilibhit forest division. The injured is a resident of Rahulnagar village situated close to Chandiahazara.
Haripur range has a forest area and the village where incident took place is situated on the periphery of the forest. The man got injuries on his forehead and hands. There is still a confusion if the man was attacked by a tiger or a leopard.
While the man who got injured said he saw a tiger, the forest officials said that they have not located any pugmarks in and around the area where incident happened. "We have searched the area and have not found any pugmarks," said VK Singh, DFO, Pilibhit.
The nature of the injury also shows that he might have been attacked by a leopard. The man was, however, admitted to the hospital immediately after the incident. When asked if there was any compensation also released to the man, DFO said that a proposal has been sent to the Chief Wildlife Warden (CWW) regarding the same.
The forest officials are also not running down the fact that the man could have been injured by a tiger. The team has been deputed in the area to figure out the movement of big cat in the area. Though in the past three days, forest team has not come across any big cat moving in the area.
Things do not end here only. There is another mismatch between the version of the injured and forest team at the spot. While the man said he was attacked by the feline in his village, forest staff found his clothing inside the forest area.
An almost similar incident was reported from Kakraha range of Katarniaghat. A man was injured in a wild attack. When contacted, DFO Katarniaghat, RK Singh, said, "It is not confirmed if the man was attacked by a leopard or any other animal." Kakraha range is still to send a report on the incident to the DFO.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Big-cat-injures-youth-in-Pilibhit/articleshow/7879035.cms
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Leopard kills German woman on Namibian TV set
Published: 17 Mar 11 08:02 CET
A leopard not previously thought to be dangerous has killed a member of a German television crew making an episode of a popular series in Namibia, production company ndF said.
"The animal was thought to be completely docile. Some members of the team even stroked him before," a spokeswoman for ndF said on Wednesday after the deadly incident outside the former German colony's capital Windhoek last Friday.
The 46-year-old victim, who has not been named, was part of a team preparing an episode of Um Himmels Willen, or "For Heaven's Sake", a light-hearted and long-running series set in and around a Bavarian nunnery.
"He completely unexpectedly went for her throat," Ulf Tubbesing, a Namibian-German television veterinarian who owned the farm where the tragedy took place, told German daily Bild.
"I immediately ordered my farm manager to shoot the animal."
The woman died of her wounds at the scene.
AFP/ka
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110317-33777.html
A leopard not previously thought to be dangerous has killed a member of a German television crew making an episode of a popular series in Namibia, production company ndF said.
"The animal was thought to be completely docile. Some members of the team even stroked him before," a spokeswoman for ndF said on Wednesday after the deadly incident outside the former German colony's capital Windhoek last Friday.
The 46-year-old victim, who has not been named, was part of a team preparing an episode of Um Himmels Willen, or "For Heaven's Sake", a light-hearted and long-running series set in and around a Bavarian nunnery.
"He completely unexpectedly went for her throat," Ulf Tubbesing, a Namibian-German television veterinarian who owned the farm where the tragedy took place, told German daily Bild.
"I immediately ordered my farm manager to shoot the animal."
The woman died of her wounds at the scene.
AFP/ka
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110317-33777.html
Friday, December 10, 2010
Alabama "big cat" attack (3 articles) (via Chad Arment)
Harmes: Cougar attacked
Health officials call for rabies shots
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Frank Harmes thought it was bad enough getting clawed by what he says was a cougar last Wednesday. But that was just the start.
Since then, a combination of adrenalin ups and downs, excitement, media attention, an emergency room visit, doctor calls, personal business in Gadsden Saturday, a visit with game wardens Monday - who took the knife Harmes said he used to stab the attacking cougar for possible DNA testing - and facing his first in a series of rabies shots Tuesday has left the 29-year-old Union Grove man near exhaustion.
His mother, Viola Harmes, said he was experiencing delayed shock and was confined to rest under doctor's orders.
Maybe the biggest shock of them all, she said, is that so many people locally don't realize or accept that big cats - whether they're called cougars, mountain lions or panthers - roam the mountains and woods of Marshall and Morgan counties.
"We came from the foothills of southern Indiana and eastern Kentucky, and it was always common knowledge that the cats were in the Appalachians," she said.
This fall, she said, they've heard the big cats growling or screaming on the average of five nights a week.
Maybe, she said Monday, if the Alabama Department of Conservation finds conclusive evidence from the knife, more people will recognize there's a danger they need to be aware of in the area.
Harmes said her son's doctor at the emergency room at Marshall Medical Center North first advised against rabies shots without a recommendation from the health department, fearing a reaction might pose a bigger threat than the possibility of contracting rabies through a claw scratch as opposed to a bite.
However, Harmes said, an official at the Alabama Department of Public Health in Montgomery called Monday morning and said as a matter of public safety he would send the hospital a letter recommending the rabies shots.
While they are not as painful as they once were when given in the stomach, on Tuesday Frank was to start a series of five sets of two shots, one in the arm and one in the rump.
The Harmes family - which includes Frank, his wife, Sherry, Viola, her wheelchair-bound mother and a brother - moved from Guntersville to Royster Road, which is to the north of Union Grove Road near the intersection of U.S. 231. The three older family members live in a house there, while Frank and his wife live there in a 40-foot Coachman travel trailer.
The property is located near the bluffs that fall away into the woods that extend into Greenbriar Cove.
Though they heard plenty from the cats, the real trouble did not occur until last Wednesday. Frank walked a stray dog down the mountain, through the woods, to a woman who lives in the cove, and was on his way home when he suddenly found himself facing a tan panther about 10 feet away, he told reporters.
When it quickly moved to within 5 feet of him, Frank kicked at it, trying to scare it off. That, he said, is when the cat clawed his leg.
He was wearing insulated coveralls, and, underneath, a pair of jeans and flannel pajamas. Four holes were ripped through all three pair of pants, and Frank got three slashes in his right leg. The cat's paw would have been about 5 inches across, he said.
Though not very deep, Harmes said, the middle slash penetrated to her son's shin bone.
Frank was carrying a knife his wife had given him last month for their anniversary. He said he pulled it from a sheath on his thigh and stabbed the cougar in the front leg and then the hindquarter as it turned and ran off.
He said the cat was about three feet tall and, tail and all, about seven feet long. Down to its white whiskers, it looked like the Florida panthers he saw when they lived near Gainesville, he said, only this cat was either old or hungry and skinny.
Frank wondered if the cat had been looking at him as a meal. His mother agrees with the theory.
"If it had been healthy he would not be here," Harmes said. "When it was advancing on him, it was trying to get him to run. That's their MO, to jump on the back and break a victim's neck."
Besides the cuts in his leg, the power of the cat's paw left her son's leg bruised, she said.
"I didn't realize how powerful they are," Harmes added. "And this one was either sick or very old."
Other cats, other places
Harmes said she saw a black panther in the winter of 1982 in southern Indiana that was 6-7-feet long from "nose to butt." It was nighttime but showed up plainly in the outdoor lights against a field of fresh snow.
After Indiana, Harmes lived in Gainesville, Fla. She said she holds a degree in environmental engineering, specializing in biology, and worked at Payne's Prairie, a 21,000-acre state park reserve.
While Florida has tan panthers living in the southern part of the state, its officials say none live in the wilds at Payne's Prairie. Harmes disagrees.
"We heard them all the time back there," she said.
Because of her mother's failing health, the family moved to Guntersville, sort of halfway between the heat of Florida and the cold of Indiana. Two years ago, they moved to Royster Road and began to quietly hear about big cats.
"The people up here know they are here; it's always been whispered and hush-hush," Harmes said. "I've been trying to tell people there are panthers up here. They think I am crazy but they are. I'm here to tell you."
She hears them often, Harmes said. Some sound like younger cats calling for their mother. The mother sounds like a woman screaming.
Harmes said a black male panther recently climbed into their shed through a hole in the door where a board was missing. Frank saw it come out and boarded up the hole.
Recently, a male marking its territory sprayed Frank and Sherry's travel trailer.
Warnings
Now, Harmes said, her son has been attacked.
Frank does not work because he's disabled with orthopedic problems stemming from a 13-inch growth spurt as an early teen. Harmes said that also affected his circulation, which causes him to get cold easily - and which is why he, fortunately, was wearing so many layers of pants when he was attacked.
When he got home after the attack he was pumped with adrenalin, Harmes said. They called the ER but it was busy and did not take him until Thursday.
Saturday night, Frank returned to the ER, but this time it was because of a problem his mom was having. By then, his story had been on two Huntsville TV stations and in the Guntersville paper that day. People at the ER recognized his picture, and he eventually had to break away from the attention.
Harmes said that's when the exhaustion and shock began taking their effect.
"Sunday night he could not stand light or noise," she said. "The pants leg against his skin, he could not stand that."
Monday, his doctor sent him to bed for rest.
"It's stirred up a busy bee's nest," Harmes said. But maybe it will do some good.
"I want the people in North Alabama to know these cats have been and they are here," she said. "You make your children stay inside at night if you live next to a wooded area. If young couples go walking in the woods, don't do it at night. The hunters need to know - especially the hunters' wives.
"Black panthers were never eradicated from Alabama and the Appalachian foothills," she continued. "I don't care who says that. I have seen them with my eyes."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news2.txt
Knife testing dead-ends without blood
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
It's a dead-end, as far as the Alabama Department of Conservation is concerned.
No traces of blood were found on the knife a Union Grove man said he used to stab a cougar that was attacking him, according a DOC biologist. But had there been something there to analyze, he added, it would have been interesting.
Frank Harmes, who got claw gashes in his leg last Wednesday, turned over his knife Monday to Marshall County game wardens Kevin Kirby and Lana Finney. They in turn had it delivered to Randy Liles, supervising biologist for DOC's Northeast Alabama office in Jacksonville.
Harmes told the game wardens he cleaned the knife several times after the incident with alcohol. He apparently did a good job.
Liles said Tuesday he tested the knife for blood and none was found.
"There probably could have been (DNA on the blade), but without any blood or anything there was nothing to test," said Liles, who learned about the alleged attack Monday. "It sure would have been interesting."
There had been hopes that the cotton cord grip on the knife might have contained some blood, but Liles said only dirt was found on it.
Had there been DNA, he said, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would likely have conducted the test because DOC does not do that.
Liles said that leaves nothing scientific to confirm a cougar, but he can't totally discard the story.
"From what all he told us, it would indicate that, if anything, it sounds like an escapee from a breeder or exotic game farm," he said. "I think a wild mountain lion or puma would probably have done a lot more damage than what I have seen, but we can't really confirm or deny anything."
He said DOC offices across the state get numerous calls about sightings, especially during hunting season.
"Everyone wants to call it 'black panther,' but there is no such thing," Liles said. "There are black pigmentations of leopards and jaguars.
"We are pretty certain we don't have a viable population in Alabama, but I think a lot of people would be really surprised - I think we might be surprised - at some of the animals people have in captivity."
Some people send in photos of what they think are cougars or mountain lions that are taken with game cameras, but the problem is, Liles said, most are poor quality or have no reference point to determine the size of the animal.
Some, he said, are passed off as recent photos but have been doctored in Photoshop and been around six or seven years.
"I'm not saying people are not seeing anything," Liles said. "I am not saying that at all. I do know that any kind of credible sighting we do get, we try to look into it, but we just don't have the people and the time to look at everything.
"If someone can get a really good picture or a really good track, put a bucket over it and protect it, and I would love to come out and look at it," he continued. "But you would think with all the sightings we get in a year, one of these cats would turn up somewhere."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news3.txt
Bray, Masons say they don't need the state's acknowledgment to believe big cats in hills
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Radford Bray doesn't have to wait until the Alabama Department of Conservation confirms mountain lions or cougars live in the rugged hills around Morgan City. He says he came face to face - or face to tail, as the case might be - with one in the woods, and that's all the proof he needs.
Others who say they have seen and heard them over the years agree with not needing official verification that big cats roam the mountains and woods in Marshall and Morgan County.
"Them cats has always been here," Bray said Monday. "They ain't just come around. I guess the truth of the matter is they never left."
Bray has lived 21 years near Morgan City on Ditto Circle, about 300 feet from the bluff that falls away into Greenbriar Cove. About four years ago, using a motion sensitive game camera, he got a photo that he said is more than enough proof of big cats for him, even without his live encounter.
That took place one evening, early in hunting season, about two years ago. Bray and his grandson, Gavin, 7 at the time, followed a rough trail to a place about 60 feet below the bluff and spent about 30 minutes setting up a surveillance camera.
Returning by the same route, they had just topped the bluff when a large cat jumped out of foot-tall grass beside the trail, Bray said. It was about 15 feet away.
"It was lying flat on the ground. I never seen him until he jumped up and ran the other way," he said.
Bray was especially concerned that his grandson was with him, and he did not have a gun or any other protection. They did, however, have a beagle with them, but it was no help at all.
"That dog would not chase him. He wouldn't even smell of him," Bray said.
He described the animal as definitely being a long-tailed cat about the tan color of a dark deer and larger than a German shepherd.
"It was pretty wide on the backend," Bray said. "It was pretty healthy, I'll put it that way."
Some people claim to have seen or heard black panthers in the local wilds, but the Alabama Department of Conservation maintains that's impossible. Those seen in zoos are a black phase of the jaguar from Central and South America.
"There has never been a black panther, ever, documented in this country," Mark Sasser, non-game wildlife coordinator for the conservation department told The Arab Tribune previously. "They have never been known to exist (in the United States)."
While the mountain lion Bray and Gavin saw was not black, Bray said it was dark enough that in the evening or at nighttime a person might mistake it for black.
While the state maintains that no one has ever proved that tan cougars like those in Florida or mountain lions exist in Alabama, Bray said he knows better.
"I know there are two different cats up here," he said. "One is an old one with a white tip on its tail. My daddy has seen it from a tree stand. It's been here ever since we've been here."
The other is the one he saw himself, Bray said.
He said he knows several people who have seen a big cat, including his son, who probably saw the cat he and Gavin saw. His son lives near Nada Flack, who talked to the Tribune in October 2009 about mountain lions she said she's seen in her backyard on Hughes Circle.
"The cat she's seeing is probably the same one I've been seeing," Bray said. "He comes and stays about a month, then leaves for a couple of months. Whenever it's around, it makes itself known.
Eating cats' food
Bray's sister and brother-in-law, Delphia and Doug Mason, are no strangers to hearing and seeing - at least in Doug's case - big cats. They live on Royster Road and are neighbors to Frank Harmes, who said he was clawed by a mountain lion last week. (Please see related story starting on Page 1.)
Delphia has lived in the Morgan City neighborhood near the bluffs overlooking Greenbriar Cove since 1979.
"They have been here ever since I have been here," she said this week of the big cats, which she refers to as cougars.
"We have woods on three sides of us and hear one growling out in the woods," she said. "It's close. It's real, real close."
She and Doug returned from the grocery store one night after church and heard a racket as they were getting out of their vehicle.
"It's the cougar coming around the bluff," she told Doug.
"It stayed outside of the lights we had on, but it went on through our backyard. It was probably going to the spring for a drink of water. We stayed in the car until it was gone then grabbed the groceries and hurried to the porch."
One morning about three years ago, Delphia said, Doug looked out a window and saw two cougars were on their back porch, helping themselves to their four pet cats' food. One, she said, was black, the other tan.
"The black one was not nearly as big as the tan one," she said. "Doug scared them, and they left."
Numerous sightings
Delphia said sightings and hearings of cougars are common in the area. While they sleep with their windows closed, her daughter used to live where the Harmeses now live and slept with her windows open.
"She heard cougars screaming all the time," Delphia said.
Then there's the neighbor who shoots his gun to scare cougars away from his horses. And one night a few years ago a woman in the area came home one night to find two cougars in her yard.
"She had to wait until they left. She was afraid to get out," Delphia said. "I know cougars are here."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news4.txt
Health officials call for rabies shots
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Frank Harmes thought it was bad enough getting clawed by what he says was a cougar last Wednesday. But that was just the start.
Since then, a combination of adrenalin ups and downs, excitement, media attention, an emergency room visit, doctor calls, personal business in Gadsden Saturday, a visit with game wardens Monday - who took the knife Harmes said he used to stab the attacking cougar for possible DNA testing - and facing his first in a series of rabies shots Tuesday has left the 29-year-old Union Grove man near exhaustion.
His mother, Viola Harmes, said he was experiencing delayed shock and was confined to rest under doctor's orders.
Maybe the biggest shock of them all, she said, is that so many people locally don't realize or accept that big cats - whether they're called cougars, mountain lions or panthers - roam the mountains and woods of Marshall and Morgan counties.
"We came from the foothills of southern Indiana and eastern Kentucky, and it was always common knowledge that the cats were in the Appalachians," she said.
This fall, she said, they've heard the big cats growling or screaming on the average of five nights a week.
Maybe, she said Monday, if the Alabama Department of Conservation finds conclusive evidence from the knife, more people will recognize there's a danger they need to be aware of in the area.
Harmes said her son's doctor at the emergency room at Marshall Medical Center North first advised against rabies shots without a recommendation from the health department, fearing a reaction might pose a bigger threat than the possibility of contracting rabies through a claw scratch as opposed to a bite.
However, Harmes said, an official at the Alabama Department of Public Health in Montgomery called Monday morning and said as a matter of public safety he would send the hospital a letter recommending the rabies shots.
While they are not as painful as they once were when given in the stomach, on Tuesday Frank was to start a series of five sets of two shots, one in the arm and one in the rump.
The Harmes family - which includes Frank, his wife, Sherry, Viola, her wheelchair-bound mother and a brother - moved from Guntersville to Royster Road, which is to the north of Union Grove Road near the intersection of U.S. 231. The three older family members live in a house there, while Frank and his wife live there in a 40-foot Coachman travel trailer.
The property is located near the bluffs that fall away into the woods that extend into Greenbriar Cove.
Though they heard plenty from the cats, the real trouble did not occur until last Wednesday. Frank walked a stray dog down the mountain, through the woods, to a woman who lives in the cove, and was on his way home when he suddenly found himself facing a tan panther about 10 feet away, he told reporters.
When it quickly moved to within 5 feet of him, Frank kicked at it, trying to scare it off. That, he said, is when the cat clawed his leg.
He was wearing insulated coveralls, and, underneath, a pair of jeans and flannel pajamas. Four holes were ripped through all three pair of pants, and Frank got three slashes in his right leg. The cat's paw would have been about 5 inches across, he said.
Though not very deep, Harmes said, the middle slash penetrated to her son's shin bone.
Frank was carrying a knife his wife had given him last month for their anniversary. He said he pulled it from a sheath on his thigh and stabbed the cougar in the front leg and then the hindquarter as it turned and ran off.
He said the cat was about three feet tall and, tail and all, about seven feet long. Down to its white whiskers, it looked like the Florida panthers he saw when they lived near Gainesville, he said, only this cat was either old or hungry and skinny.
Frank wondered if the cat had been looking at him as a meal. His mother agrees with the theory.
"If it had been healthy he would not be here," Harmes said. "When it was advancing on him, it was trying to get him to run. That's their MO, to jump on the back and break a victim's neck."
Besides the cuts in his leg, the power of the cat's paw left her son's leg bruised, she said.
"I didn't realize how powerful they are," Harmes added. "And this one was either sick or very old."
Other cats, other places
Harmes said she saw a black panther in the winter of 1982 in southern Indiana that was 6-7-feet long from "nose to butt." It was nighttime but showed up plainly in the outdoor lights against a field of fresh snow.
After Indiana, Harmes lived in Gainesville, Fla. She said she holds a degree in environmental engineering, specializing in biology, and worked at Payne's Prairie, a 21,000-acre state park reserve.
While Florida has tan panthers living in the southern part of the state, its officials say none live in the wilds at Payne's Prairie. Harmes disagrees.
"We heard them all the time back there," she said.
Because of her mother's failing health, the family moved to Guntersville, sort of halfway between the heat of Florida and the cold of Indiana. Two years ago, they moved to Royster Road and began to quietly hear about big cats.
"The people up here know they are here; it's always been whispered and hush-hush," Harmes said. "I've been trying to tell people there are panthers up here. They think I am crazy but they are. I'm here to tell you."
She hears them often, Harmes said. Some sound like younger cats calling for their mother. The mother sounds like a woman screaming.
Harmes said a black male panther recently climbed into their shed through a hole in the door where a board was missing. Frank saw it come out and boarded up the hole.
Recently, a male marking its territory sprayed Frank and Sherry's travel trailer.
Warnings
Now, Harmes said, her son has been attacked.
Frank does not work because he's disabled with orthopedic problems stemming from a 13-inch growth spurt as an early teen. Harmes said that also affected his circulation, which causes him to get cold easily - and which is why he, fortunately, was wearing so many layers of pants when he was attacked.
When he got home after the attack he was pumped with adrenalin, Harmes said. They called the ER but it was busy and did not take him until Thursday.
Saturday night, Frank returned to the ER, but this time it was because of a problem his mom was having. By then, his story had been on two Huntsville TV stations and in the Guntersville paper that day. People at the ER recognized his picture, and he eventually had to break away from the attention.
Harmes said that's when the exhaustion and shock began taking their effect.
"Sunday night he could not stand light or noise," she said. "The pants leg against his skin, he could not stand that."
Monday, his doctor sent him to bed for rest.
"It's stirred up a busy bee's nest," Harmes said. But maybe it will do some good.
"I want the people in North Alabama to know these cats have been and they are here," she said. "You make your children stay inside at night if you live next to a wooded area. If young couples go walking in the woods, don't do it at night. The hunters need to know - especially the hunters' wives.
"Black panthers were never eradicated from Alabama and the Appalachian foothills," she continued. "I don't care who says that. I have seen them with my eyes."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news2.txt
Knife testing dead-ends without blood
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
It's a dead-end, as far as the Alabama Department of Conservation is concerned.
No traces of blood were found on the knife a Union Grove man said he used to stab a cougar that was attacking him, according a DOC biologist. But had there been something there to analyze, he added, it would have been interesting.
Frank Harmes, who got claw gashes in his leg last Wednesday, turned over his knife Monday to Marshall County game wardens Kevin Kirby and Lana Finney. They in turn had it delivered to Randy Liles, supervising biologist for DOC's Northeast Alabama office in Jacksonville.
Harmes told the game wardens he cleaned the knife several times after the incident with alcohol. He apparently did a good job.
Liles said Tuesday he tested the knife for blood and none was found.
"There probably could have been (DNA on the blade), but without any blood or anything there was nothing to test," said Liles, who learned about the alleged attack Monday. "It sure would have been interesting."
There had been hopes that the cotton cord grip on the knife might have contained some blood, but Liles said only dirt was found on it.
Had there been DNA, he said, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would likely have conducted the test because DOC does not do that.
Liles said that leaves nothing scientific to confirm a cougar, but he can't totally discard the story.
"From what all he told us, it would indicate that, if anything, it sounds like an escapee from a breeder or exotic game farm," he said. "I think a wild mountain lion or puma would probably have done a lot more damage than what I have seen, but we can't really confirm or deny anything."
He said DOC offices across the state get numerous calls about sightings, especially during hunting season.
"Everyone wants to call it 'black panther,' but there is no such thing," Liles said. "There are black pigmentations of leopards and jaguars.
"We are pretty certain we don't have a viable population in Alabama, but I think a lot of people would be really surprised - I think we might be surprised - at some of the animals people have in captivity."
Some people send in photos of what they think are cougars or mountain lions that are taken with game cameras, but the problem is, Liles said, most are poor quality or have no reference point to determine the size of the animal.
Some, he said, are passed off as recent photos but have been doctored in Photoshop and been around six or seven years.
"I'm not saying people are not seeing anything," Liles said. "I am not saying that at all. I do know that any kind of credible sighting we do get, we try to look into it, but we just don't have the people and the time to look at everything.
"If someone can get a really good picture or a really good track, put a bucket over it and protect it, and I would love to come out and look at it," he continued. "But you would think with all the sightings we get in a year, one of these cats would turn up somewhere."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news3.txt
Bray, Masons say they don't need the state's acknowledgment to believe big cats in hills
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Radford Bray doesn't have to wait until the Alabama Department of Conservation confirms mountain lions or cougars live in the rugged hills around Morgan City. He says he came face to face - or face to tail, as the case might be - with one in the woods, and that's all the proof he needs.
Others who say they have seen and heard them over the years agree with not needing official verification that big cats roam the mountains and woods in Marshall and Morgan County.
"Them cats has always been here," Bray said Monday. "They ain't just come around. I guess the truth of the matter is they never left."
Bray has lived 21 years near Morgan City on Ditto Circle, about 300 feet from the bluff that falls away into Greenbriar Cove. About four years ago, using a motion sensitive game camera, he got a photo that he said is more than enough proof of big cats for him, even without his live encounter.
That took place one evening, early in hunting season, about two years ago. Bray and his grandson, Gavin, 7 at the time, followed a rough trail to a place about 60 feet below the bluff and spent about 30 minutes setting up a surveillance camera.
Returning by the same route, they had just topped the bluff when a large cat jumped out of foot-tall grass beside the trail, Bray said. It was about 15 feet away.
"It was lying flat on the ground. I never seen him until he jumped up and ran the other way," he said.
Bray was especially concerned that his grandson was with him, and he did not have a gun or any other protection. They did, however, have a beagle with them, but it was no help at all.
"That dog would not chase him. He wouldn't even smell of him," Bray said.
He described the animal as definitely being a long-tailed cat about the tan color of a dark deer and larger than a German shepherd.
"It was pretty wide on the backend," Bray said. "It was pretty healthy, I'll put it that way."
Some people claim to have seen or heard black panthers in the local wilds, but the Alabama Department of Conservation maintains that's impossible. Those seen in zoos are a black phase of the jaguar from Central and South America.
"There has never been a black panther, ever, documented in this country," Mark Sasser, non-game wildlife coordinator for the conservation department told The Arab Tribune previously. "They have never been known to exist (in the United States)."
While the mountain lion Bray and Gavin saw was not black, Bray said it was dark enough that in the evening or at nighttime a person might mistake it for black.
While the state maintains that no one has ever proved that tan cougars like those in Florida or mountain lions exist in Alabama, Bray said he knows better.
"I know there are two different cats up here," he said. "One is an old one with a white tip on its tail. My daddy has seen it from a tree stand. It's been here ever since we've been here."
The other is the one he saw himself, Bray said.
He said he knows several people who have seen a big cat, including his son, who probably saw the cat he and Gavin saw. His son lives near Nada Flack, who talked to the Tribune in October 2009 about mountain lions she said she's seen in her backyard on Hughes Circle.
"The cat she's seeing is probably the same one I've been seeing," Bray said. "He comes and stays about a month, then leaves for a couple of months. Whenever it's around, it makes itself known.
Eating cats' food
Bray's sister and brother-in-law, Delphia and Doug Mason, are no strangers to hearing and seeing - at least in Doug's case - big cats. They live on Royster Road and are neighbors to Frank Harmes, who said he was clawed by a mountain lion last week. (Please see related story starting on Page 1.)
Delphia has lived in the Morgan City neighborhood near the bluffs overlooking Greenbriar Cove since 1979.
"They have been here ever since I have been here," she said this week of the big cats, which she refers to as cougars.
"We have woods on three sides of us and hear one growling out in the woods," she said. "It's close. It's real, real close."
She and Doug returned from the grocery store one night after church and heard a racket as they were getting out of their vehicle.
"It's the cougar coming around the bluff," she told Doug.
"It stayed outside of the lights we had on, but it went on through our backyard. It was probably going to the spring for a drink of water. We stayed in the car until it was gone then grabbed the groceries and hurried to the porch."
One morning about three years ago, Delphia said, Doug looked out a window and saw two cougars were on their back porch, helping themselves to their four pet cats' food. One, she said, was black, the other tan.
"The black one was not nearly as big as the tan one," she said. "Doug scared them, and they left."
Numerous sightings
Delphia said sightings and hearings of cougars are common in the area. While they sleep with their windows closed, her daughter used to live where the Harmeses now live and slept with her windows open.
"She heard cougars screaming all the time," Delphia said.
Then there's the neighbor who shoots his gun to scare cougars away from his horses. And one night a few years ago a woman in the area came home one night to find two cougars in her yard.
"She had to wait until they left. She was afraid to get out," Delphia said. "I know cougars are here."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news4.txt
Alabama "big cat" attack (3 articles) (via Chad Arment)
Harmes: Cougar attacked
Health officials call for rabies shots
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Frank Harmes thought it was bad enough getting clawed by what he says was a cougar last Wednesday. But that was just the start.
Since then, a combination of adrenalin ups and downs, excitement, media attention, an emergency room visit, doctor calls, personal business in Gadsden Saturday, a visit with game wardens Monday - who took the knife Harmes said he used to stab the attacking cougar for possible DNA testing - and facing his first in a series of rabies shots Tuesday has left the 29-year-old Union Grove man near exhaustion.
His mother, Viola Harmes, said he was experiencing delayed shock and was confined to rest under doctor's orders.
Maybe the biggest shock of them all, she said, is that so many people locally don't realize or accept that big cats - whether they're called cougars, mountain lions or panthers - roam the mountains and woods of Marshall and Morgan counties.
"We came from the foothills of southern Indiana and eastern Kentucky, and it was always common knowledge that the cats were in the Appalachians," she said.
This fall, she said, they've heard the big cats growling or screaming on the average of five nights a week.
Maybe, she said Monday, if the Alabama Department of Conservation finds conclusive evidence from the knife, more people will recognize there's a danger they need to be aware of in the area.
Harmes said her son's doctor at the emergency room at Marshall Medical Center North first advised against rabies shots without a recommendation from the health department, fearing a reaction might pose a bigger threat than the possibility of contracting rabies through a claw scratch as opposed to a bite.
However, Harmes said, an official at the Alabama Department of Public Health in Montgomery called Monday morning and said as a matter of public safety he would send the hospital a letter recommending the rabies shots.
While they are not as painful as they once were when given in the stomach, on Tuesday Frank was to start a series of five sets of two shots, one in the arm and one in the rump.
The Harmes family - which includes Frank, his wife, Sherry, Viola, her wheelchair-bound mother and a brother - moved from Guntersville to Royster Road, which is to the north of Union Grove Road near the intersection of U.S. 231. The three older family members live in a house there, while Frank and his wife live there in a 40-foot Coachman travel trailer.
The property is located near the bluffs that fall away into the woods that extend into Greenbriar Cove.
Though they heard plenty from the cats, the real trouble did not occur until last Wednesday. Frank walked a stray dog down the mountain, through the woods, to a woman who lives in the cove, and was on his way home when he suddenly found himself facing a tan panther about 10 feet away, he told reporters.
When it quickly moved to within 5 feet of him, Frank kicked at it, trying to scare it off. That, he said, is when the cat clawed his leg.
He was wearing insulated coveralls, and, underneath, a pair of jeans and flannel pajamas. Four holes were ripped through all three pair of pants, and Frank got three slashes in his right leg. The cat's paw would have been about 5 inches across, he said.
Though not very deep, Harmes said, the middle slash penetrated to her son's shin bone.
Frank was carrying a knife his wife had given him last month for their anniversary. He said he pulled it from a sheath on his thigh and stabbed the cougar in the front leg and then the hindquarter as it turned and ran off.
He said the cat was about three feet tall and, tail and all, about seven feet long. Down to its white whiskers, it looked like the Florida panthers he saw when they lived near Gainesville, he said, only this cat was either old or hungry and skinny.
Frank wondered if the cat had been looking at him as a meal. His mother agrees with the theory.
"If it had been healthy he would not be here," Harmes said. "When it was advancing on him, it was trying to get him to run. That's their MO, to jump on the back and break a victim's neck."
Besides the cuts in his leg, the power of the cat's paw left her son's leg bruised, she said.
"I didn't realize how powerful they are," Harmes added. "And this one was either sick or very old."
Other cats, other places
Harmes said she saw a black panther in the winter of 1982 in southern Indiana that was 6-7-feet long from "nose to butt." It was nighttime but showed up plainly in the outdoor lights against a field of fresh snow.
After Indiana, Harmes lived in Gainesville, Fla. She said she holds a degree in environmental engineering, specializing in biology, and worked at Payne's Prairie, a 21,000-acre state park reserve.
While Florida has tan panthers living in the southern part of the state, its officials say none live in the wilds at Payne's Prairie. Harmes disagrees.
"We heard them all the time back there," she said.
Because of her mother's failing health, the family moved to Guntersville, sort of halfway between the heat of Florida and the cold of Indiana. Two years ago, they moved to Royster Road and began to quietly hear about big cats.
"The people up here know they are here; it's always been whispered and hush-hush," Harmes said. "I've been trying to tell people there are panthers up here. They think I am crazy but they are. I'm here to tell you."
She hears them often, Harmes said. Some sound like younger cats calling for their mother. The mother sounds like a woman screaming.
Harmes said a black male panther recently climbed into their shed through a hole in the door where a board was missing. Frank saw it come out and boarded up the hole.
Recently, a male marking its territory sprayed Frank and Sherry's travel trailer.
Warnings
Now, Harmes said, her son has been attacked.
Frank does not work because he's disabled with orthopedic problems stemming from a 13-inch growth spurt as an early teen. Harmes said that also affected his circulation, which causes him to get cold easily - and which is why he, fortunately, was wearing so many layers of pants when he was attacked.
When he got home after the attack he was pumped with adrenalin, Harmes said. They called the ER but it was busy and did not take him until Thursday.
Saturday night, Frank returned to the ER, but this time it was because of a problem his mom was having. By then, his story had been on two Huntsville TV stations and in the Guntersville paper that day. People at the ER recognized his picture, and he eventually had to break away from the attention.
Harmes said that's when the exhaustion and shock began taking their effect.
"Sunday night he could not stand light or noise," she said. "The pants leg against his skin, he could not stand that."
Monday, his doctor sent him to bed for rest.
"It's stirred up a busy bee's nest," Harmes said. But maybe it will do some good.
"I want the people in North Alabama to know these cats have been and they are here," she said. "You make your children stay inside at night if you live next to a wooded area. If young couples go walking in the woods, don't do it at night. The hunters need to know - especially the hunters' wives.
"Black panthers were never eradicated from Alabama and the Appalachian foothills," she continued. "I don't care who says that. I have seen them with my eyes."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news2.txt
Knife testing dead-ends without blood
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
It's a dead-end, as far as the Alabama Department of Conservation is concerned.
No traces of blood were found on the knife a Union Grove man said he used to stab a cougar that was attacking him, according a DOC biologist. But had there been something there to analyze, he added, it would have been interesting.
Frank Harmes, who got claw gashes in his leg last Wednesday, turned over his knife Monday to Marshall County game wardens Kevin Kirby and Lana Finney. They in turn had it delivered to Randy Liles, supervising biologist for DOC's Northeast Alabama office in Jacksonville.
Harmes told the game wardens he cleaned the knife several times after the incident with alcohol. He apparently did a good job.
Liles said Tuesday he tested the knife for blood and none was found.
"There probably could have been (DNA on the blade), but without any blood or anything there was nothing to test," said Liles, who learned about the alleged attack Monday. "It sure would have been interesting."
There had been hopes that the cotton cord grip on the knife might have contained some blood, but Liles said only dirt was found on it.
Had there been DNA, he said, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would likely have conducted the test because DOC does not do that.
Liles said that leaves nothing scientific to confirm a cougar, but he can't totally discard the story.
"From what all he told us, it would indicate that, if anything, it sounds like an escapee from a breeder or exotic game farm," he said. "I think a wild mountain lion or puma would probably have done a lot more damage than what I have seen, but we can't really confirm or deny anything."
He said DOC offices across the state get numerous calls about sightings, especially during hunting season.
"Everyone wants to call it 'black panther,' but there is no such thing," Liles said. "There are black pigmentations of leopards and jaguars.
"We are pretty certain we don't have a viable population in Alabama, but I think a lot of people would be really surprised - I think we might be surprised - at some of the animals people have in captivity."
Some people send in photos of what they think are cougars or mountain lions that are taken with game cameras, but the problem is, Liles said, most are poor quality or have no reference point to determine the size of the animal.
Some, he said, are passed off as recent photos but have been doctored in Photoshop and been around six or seven years.
"I'm not saying people are not seeing anything," Liles said. "I am not saying that at all. I do know that any kind of credible sighting we do get, we try to look into it, but we just don't have the people and the time to look at everything.
"If someone can get a really good picture or a really good track, put a bucket over it and protect it, and I would love to come out and look at it," he continued. "But you would think with all the sightings we get in a year, one of these cats would turn up somewhere."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news3.txt
Bray, Masons say they don't need the state's acknowledgment to believe big cats in hills
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Radford Bray doesn't have to wait until the Alabama Department of Conservation confirms mountain lions or cougars live in the rugged hills around Morgan City. He says he came face to face - or face to tail, as the case might be - with one in the woods, and that's all the proof he needs.
Others who say they have seen and heard them over the years agree with not needing official verification that big cats roam the mountains and woods in Marshall and Morgan County.
"Them cats has always been here," Bray said Monday. "They ain't just come around. I guess the truth of the matter is they never left."
Bray has lived 21 years near Morgan City on Ditto Circle, about 300 feet from the bluff that falls away into Greenbriar Cove. About four years ago, using a motion sensitive game camera, he got a photo that he said is more than enough proof of big cats for him, even without his live encounter.
That took place one evening, early in hunting season, about two years ago. Bray and his grandson, Gavin, 7 at the time, followed a rough trail to a place about 60 feet below the bluff and spent about 30 minutes setting up a surveillance camera.
Returning by the same route, they had just topped the bluff when a large cat jumped out of foot-tall grass beside the trail, Bray said. It was about 15 feet away.
"It was lying flat on the ground. I never seen him until he jumped up and ran the other way," he said.
Bray was especially concerned that his grandson was with him, and he did not have a gun or any other protection. They did, however, have a beagle with them, but it was no help at all.
"That dog would not chase him. He wouldn't even smell of him," Bray said.
He described the animal as definitely being a long-tailed cat about the tan color of a dark deer and larger than a German shepherd.
"It was pretty wide on the backend," Bray said. "It was pretty healthy, I'll put it that way."
Some people claim to have seen or heard black panthers in the local wilds, but the Alabama Department of Conservation maintains that's impossible. Those seen in zoos are a black phase of the jaguar from Central and South America.
"There has never been a black panther, ever, documented in this country," Mark Sasser, non-game wildlife coordinator for the conservation department told The Arab Tribune previously. "They have never been known to exist (in the United States)."
While the mountain lion Bray and Gavin saw was not black, Bray said it was dark enough that in the evening or at nighttime a person might mistake it for black.
While the state maintains that no one has ever proved that tan cougars like those in Florida or mountain lions exist in Alabama, Bray said he knows better.
"I know there are two different cats up here," he said. "One is an old one with a white tip on its tail. My daddy has seen it from a tree stand. It's been here ever since we've been here."
The other is the one he saw himself, Bray said.
He said he knows several people who have seen a big cat, including his son, who probably saw the cat he and Gavin saw. His son lives near Nada Flack, who talked to the Tribune in October 2009 about mountain lions she said she's seen in her backyard on Hughes Circle.
"The cat she's seeing is probably the same one I've been seeing," Bray said. "He comes and stays about a month, then leaves for a couple of months. Whenever it's around, it makes itself known.
Eating cats' food
Bray's sister and brother-in-law, Delphia and Doug Mason, are no strangers to hearing and seeing - at least in Doug's case - big cats. They live on Royster Road and are neighbors to Frank Harmes, who said he was clawed by a mountain lion last week. (Please see related story starting on Page 1.)
Delphia has lived in the Morgan City neighborhood near the bluffs overlooking Greenbriar Cove since 1979.
"They have been here ever since I have been here," she said this week of the big cats, which she refers to as cougars.
"We have woods on three sides of us and hear one growling out in the woods," she said. "It's close. It's real, real close."
She and Doug returned from the grocery store one night after church and heard a racket as they were getting out of their vehicle.
"It's the cougar coming around the bluff," she told Doug.
"It stayed outside of the lights we had on, but it went on through our backyard. It was probably going to the spring for a drink of water. We stayed in the car until it was gone then grabbed the groceries and hurried to the porch."
One morning about three years ago, Delphia said, Doug looked out a window and saw two cougars were on their back porch, helping themselves to their four pet cats' food. One, she said, was black, the other tan.
"The black one was not nearly as big as the tan one," she said. "Doug scared them, and they left."
Numerous sightings
Delphia said sightings and hearings of cougars are common in the area. While they sleep with their windows closed, her daughter used to live where the Harmeses now live and slept with her windows open.
"She heard cougars screaming all the time," Delphia said.
Then there's the neighbor who shoots his gun to scare cougars away from his horses. And one night a few years ago a woman in the area came home one night to find two cougars in her yard.
"She had to wait until they left. She was afraid to get out," Delphia said. "I know cougars are here."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news4.txt
Health officials call for rabies shots
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Frank Harmes thought it was bad enough getting clawed by what he says was a cougar last Wednesday. But that was just the start.
Since then, a combination of adrenalin ups and downs, excitement, media attention, an emergency room visit, doctor calls, personal business in Gadsden Saturday, a visit with game wardens Monday - who took the knife Harmes said he used to stab the attacking cougar for possible DNA testing - and facing his first in a series of rabies shots Tuesday has left the 29-year-old Union Grove man near exhaustion.
His mother, Viola Harmes, said he was experiencing delayed shock and was confined to rest under doctor's orders.
Maybe the biggest shock of them all, she said, is that so many people locally don't realize or accept that big cats - whether they're called cougars, mountain lions or panthers - roam the mountains and woods of Marshall and Morgan counties.
"We came from the foothills of southern Indiana and eastern Kentucky, and it was always common knowledge that the cats were in the Appalachians," she said.
This fall, she said, they've heard the big cats growling or screaming on the average of five nights a week.
Maybe, she said Monday, if the Alabama Department of Conservation finds conclusive evidence from the knife, more people will recognize there's a danger they need to be aware of in the area.
Harmes said her son's doctor at the emergency room at Marshall Medical Center North first advised against rabies shots without a recommendation from the health department, fearing a reaction might pose a bigger threat than the possibility of contracting rabies through a claw scratch as opposed to a bite.
However, Harmes said, an official at the Alabama Department of Public Health in Montgomery called Monday morning and said as a matter of public safety he would send the hospital a letter recommending the rabies shots.
While they are not as painful as they once were when given in the stomach, on Tuesday Frank was to start a series of five sets of two shots, one in the arm and one in the rump.
The Harmes family - which includes Frank, his wife, Sherry, Viola, her wheelchair-bound mother and a brother - moved from Guntersville to Royster Road, which is to the north of Union Grove Road near the intersection of U.S. 231. The three older family members live in a house there, while Frank and his wife live there in a 40-foot Coachman travel trailer.
The property is located near the bluffs that fall away into the woods that extend into Greenbriar Cove.
Though they heard plenty from the cats, the real trouble did not occur until last Wednesday. Frank walked a stray dog down the mountain, through the woods, to a woman who lives in the cove, and was on his way home when he suddenly found himself facing a tan panther about 10 feet away, he told reporters.
When it quickly moved to within 5 feet of him, Frank kicked at it, trying to scare it off. That, he said, is when the cat clawed his leg.
He was wearing insulated coveralls, and, underneath, a pair of jeans and flannel pajamas. Four holes were ripped through all three pair of pants, and Frank got three slashes in his right leg. The cat's paw would have been about 5 inches across, he said.
Though not very deep, Harmes said, the middle slash penetrated to her son's shin bone.
Frank was carrying a knife his wife had given him last month for their anniversary. He said he pulled it from a sheath on his thigh and stabbed the cougar in the front leg and then the hindquarter as it turned and ran off.
He said the cat was about three feet tall and, tail and all, about seven feet long. Down to its white whiskers, it looked like the Florida panthers he saw when they lived near Gainesville, he said, only this cat was either old or hungry and skinny.
Frank wondered if the cat had been looking at him as a meal. His mother agrees with the theory.
"If it had been healthy he would not be here," Harmes said. "When it was advancing on him, it was trying to get him to run. That's their MO, to jump on the back and break a victim's neck."
Besides the cuts in his leg, the power of the cat's paw left her son's leg bruised, she said.
"I didn't realize how powerful they are," Harmes added. "And this one was either sick or very old."
Other cats, other places
Harmes said she saw a black panther in the winter of 1982 in southern Indiana that was 6-7-feet long from "nose to butt." It was nighttime but showed up plainly in the outdoor lights against a field of fresh snow.
After Indiana, Harmes lived in Gainesville, Fla. She said she holds a degree in environmental engineering, specializing in biology, and worked at Payne's Prairie, a 21,000-acre state park reserve.
While Florida has tan panthers living in the southern part of the state, its officials say none live in the wilds at Payne's Prairie. Harmes disagrees.
"We heard them all the time back there," she said.
Because of her mother's failing health, the family moved to Guntersville, sort of halfway between the heat of Florida and the cold of Indiana. Two years ago, they moved to Royster Road and began to quietly hear about big cats.
"The people up here know they are here; it's always been whispered and hush-hush," Harmes said. "I've been trying to tell people there are panthers up here. They think I am crazy but they are. I'm here to tell you."
She hears them often, Harmes said. Some sound like younger cats calling for their mother. The mother sounds like a woman screaming.
Harmes said a black male panther recently climbed into their shed through a hole in the door where a board was missing. Frank saw it come out and boarded up the hole.
Recently, a male marking its territory sprayed Frank and Sherry's travel trailer.
Warnings
Now, Harmes said, her son has been attacked.
Frank does not work because he's disabled with orthopedic problems stemming from a 13-inch growth spurt as an early teen. Harmes said that also affected his circulation, which causes him to get cold easily - and which is why he, fortunately, was wearing so many layers of pants when he was attacked.
When he got home after the attack he was pumped with adrenalin, Harmes said. They called the ER but it was busy and did not take him until Thursday.
Saturday night, Frank returned to the ER, but this time it was because of a problem his mom was having. By then, his story had been on two Huntsville TV stations and in the Guntersville paper that day. People at the ER recognized his picture, and he eventually had to break away from the attention.
Harmes said that's when the exhaustion and shock began taking their effect.
"Sunday night he could not stand light or noise," she said. "The pants leg against his skin, he could not stand that."
Monday, his doctor sent him to bed for rest.
"It's stirred up a busy bee's nest," Harmes said. But maybe it will do some good.
"I want the people in North Alabama to know these cats have been and they are here," she said. "You make your children stay inside at night if you live next to a wooded area. If young couples go walking in the woods, don't do it at night. The hunters need to know - especially the hunters' wives.
"Black panthers were never eradicated from Alabama and the Appalachian foothills," she continued. "I don't care who says that. I have seen them with my eyes."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news2.txt
Knife testing dead-ends without blood
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
It's a dead-end, as far as the Alabama Department of Conservation is concerned.
No traces of blood were found on the knife a Union Grove man said he used to stab a cougar that was attacking him, according a DOC biologist. But had there been something there to analyze, he added, it would have been interesting.
Frank Harmes, who got claw gashes in his leg last Wednesday, turned over his knife Monday to Marshall County game wardens Kevin Kirby and Lana Finney. They in turn had it delivered to Randy Liles, supervising biologist for DOC's Northeast Alabama office in Jacksonville.
Harmes told the game wardens he cleaned the knife several times after the incident with alcohol. He apparently did a good job.
Liles said Tuesday he tested the knife for blood and none was found.
"There probably could have been (DNA on the blade), but without any blood or anything there was nothing to test," said Liles, who learned about the alleged attack Monday. "It sure would have been interesting."
There had been hopes that the cotton cord grip on the knife might have contained some blood, but Liles said only dirt was found on it.
Had there been DNA, he said, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would likely have conducted the test because DOC does not do that.
Liles said that leaves nothing scientific to confirm a cougar, but he can't totally discard the story.
"From what all he told us, it would indicate that, if anything, it sounds like an escapee from a breeder or exotic game farm," he said. "I think a wild mountain lion or puma would probably have done a lot more damage than what I have seen, but we can't really confirm or deny anything."
He said DOC offices across the state get numerous calls about sightings, especially during hunting season.
"Everyone wants to call it 'black panther,' but there is no such thing," Liles said. "There are black pigmentations of leopards and jaguars.
"We are pretty certain we don't have a viable population in Alabama, but I think a lot of people would be really surprised - I think we might be surprised - at some of the animals people have in captivity."
Some people send in photos of what they think are cougars or mountain lions that are taken with game cameras, but the problem is, Liles said, most are poor quality or have no reference point to determine the size of the animal.
Some, he said, are passed off as recent photos but have been doctored in Photoshop and been around six or seven years.
"I'm not saying people are not seeing anything," Liles said. "I am not saying that at all. I do know that any kind of credible sighting we do get, we try to look into it, but we just don't have the people and the time to look at everything.
"If someone can get a really good picture or a really good track, put a bucket over it and protect it, and I would love to come out and look at it," he continued. "But you would think with all the sightings we get in a year, one of these cats would turn up somewhere."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news3.txt
Bray, Masons say they don't need the state's acknowledgment to believe big cats in hills
DAVID MOORE - The Arab Tribune
Radford Bray doesn't have to wait until the Alabama Department of Conservation confirms mountain lions or cougars live in the rugged hills around Morgan City. He says he came face to face - or face to tail, as the case might be - with one in the woods, and that's all the proof he needs.
Others who say they have seen and heard them over the years agree with not needing official verification that big cats roam the mountains and woods in Marshall and Morgan County.
"Them cats has always been here," Bray said Monday. "They ain't just come around. I guess the truth of the matter is they never left."
Bray has lived 21 years near Morgan City on Ditto Circle, about 300 feet from the bluff that falls away into Greenbriar Cove. About four years ago, using a motion sensitive game camera, he got a photo that he said is more than enough proof of big cats for him, even without his live encounter.
That took place one evening, early in hunting season, about two years ago. Bray and his grandson, Gavin, 7 at the time, followed a rough trail to a place about 60 feet below the bluff and spent about 30 minutes setting up a surveillance camera.
Returning by the same route, they had just topped the bluff when a large cat jumped out of foot-tall grass beside the trail, Bray said. It was about 15 feet away.
"It was lying flat on the ground. I never seen him until he jumped up and ran the other way," he said.
Bray was especially concerned that his grandson was with him, and he did not have a gun or any other protection. They did, however, have a beagle with them, but it was no help at all.
"That dog would not chase him. He wouldn't even smell of him," Bray said.
He described the animal as definitely being a long-tailed cat about the tan color of a dark deer and larger than a German shepherd.
"It was pretty wide on the backend," Bray said. "It was pretty healthy, I'll put it that way."
Some people claim to have seen or heard black panthers in the local wilds, but the Alabama Department of Conservation maintains that's impossible. Those seen in zoos are a black phase of the jaguar from Central and South America.
"There has never been a black panther, ever, documented in this country," Mark Sasser, non-game wildlife coordinator for the conservation department told The Arab Tribune previously. "They have never been known to exist (in the United States)."
While the mountain lion Bray and Gavin saw was not black, Bray said it was dark enough that in the evening or at nighttime a person might mistake it for black.
While the state maintains that no one has ever proved that tan cougars like those in Florida or mountain lions exist in Alabama, Bray said he knows better.
"I know there are two different cats up here," he said. "One is an old one with a white tip on its tail. My daddy has seen it from a tree stand. It's been here ever since we've been here."
The other is the one he saw himself, Bray said.
He said he knows several people who have seen a big cat, including his son, who probably saw the cat he and Gavin saw. His son lives near Nada Flack, who talked to the Tribune in October 2009 about mountain lions she said she's seen in her backyard on Hughes Circle.
"The cat she's seeing is probably the same one I've been seeing," Bray said. "He comes and stays about a month, then leaves for a couple of months. Whenever it's around, it makes itself known.
Eating cats' food
Bray's sister and brother-in-law, Delphia and Doug Mason, are no strangers to hearing and seeing - at least in Doug's case - big cats. They live on Royster Road and are neighbors to Frank Harmes, who said he was clawed by a mountain lion last week. (Please see related story starting on Page 1.)
Delphia has lived in the Morgan City neighborhood near the bluffs overlooking Greenbriar Cove since 1979.
"They have been here ever since I have been here," she said this week of the big cats, which she refers to as cougars.
"We have woods on three sides of us and hear one growling out in the woods," she said. "It's close. It's real, real close."
She and Doug returned from the grocery store one night after church and heard a racket as they were getting out of their vehicle.
"It's the cougar coming around the bluff," she told Doug.
"It stayed outside of the lights we had on, but it went on through our backyard. It was probably going to the spring for a drink of water. We stayed in the car until it was gone then grabbed the groceries and hurried to the porch."
One morning about three years ago, Delphia said, Doug looked out a window and saw two cougars were on their back porch, helping themselves to their four pet cats' food. One, she said, was black, the other tan.
"The black one was not nearly as big as the tan one," she said. "Doug scared them, and they left."
Numerous sightings
Delphia said sightings and hearings of cougars are common in the area. While they sleep with their windows closed, her daughter used to live where the Harmeses now live and slept with her windows open.
"She heard cougars screaming all the time," Delphia said.
Then there's the neighbor who shoots his gun to scare cougars away from his horses. And one night a few years ago a woman in the area came home one night to find two cougars in her yard.
"She had to wait until they left. She was afraid to get out," Delphia said. "I know cougars are here."
http://www.thearabtribune.com/articles/2010/12/08/news/news4.txt
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