LEOPARD HAIR UPDATE

On the 17th August I was happy to announce that Danish Zoologist Lars Thomas had examined hair samples found in Huddisford Woods near Woolsery, and pronounced them to be leopard. I offered the hairs (which were found by Lars, Jon McGowan and a team known as the Four-Teans) to any research group or academic institution who wanted to try and verify Lars's findings. The first person to contact me was Dr Ross Barnett from Durham University who has done DNA analysis on them, and has confirmed that they are Pantherine, probably leopard. He is carrying out further tests to establish the species and subspecies for certain and a full announcement will be made then.

OLL LEWIS: The Duerdon Tracks

If you were at Weird Weekend this year, or have read this blog in the past few days or even had much contact with anyone who attended the conference you’ll have heard about the leopard hairs that were identified by Lars. These were not the only evidence of leopards presented at the conference. You might recall that last January Graham and I were called to Duerdon Farm just outside Woolsery where the farmer had found a row of unusual tracks. As the light was fading when we got there the best we could do was take some photographs of the tracks and perform a preliminary examination of the tracks to see if they were potentially anything interesting. They were and we returned the next morning with the cameras once more and this time equipment for making plaster casts.

Before I set off however there was one problem to solve. The tracks may well be frozen in the snow but if I was to use room temperature water to make plaster casts of the tracks they would melt. In order to overcome this I used several large water bottles half filled with ice and snow from our water butts and toped up the remainder of the bottle with cold almost frozen water from deeper in the butts. This worked a treat and meant that the plaster would not melt the prints so I could take extremely accurate and detailed casts.

As well as taking the casts I decided to follow the tracks to see where they led and check any possible places where hair might have come off the animal, while Graham took photographs of the tracks and our casts in situ. Sadly, I was unable to find any hair but I was able to follow the tracks over three fields before they became lost among a well trampled field of sheep. All around the tracks was undisturbed virgin snow save for the occasional bird tracks, a single fox track and the tracks made by the wheals of the tractor when the farmer who had discovered the tracks had come off the road for a closer look.

Upon examination of the prints, tracks and subsequent casts in the daylight I can say with certainty that they were definitely made by a big cat of some sort. There were no claws on any of the prints, the shape of the pad and toes is feline, you cannot draw the typical X shape you can between the toes and pad you can with canines, the foot prints themselves were arranged in groups rather than being equally spaced and there were several prints where the animal’s hind paw had stepped in the same position as the front paw had. All these things are diagnostic of cat prints and all were present.

The fore paws of the animal measured 8 by 9 cm and the hind paws measured 5 by 6 cm and the stride length was 71 cm. These measurements are within the range that you would expect to see from a leopard.

NEIL ARNOLD: The Beast of Bideford!

Quite often local stories containing the word ‘beast’ in the headline are explained by domestic animals or on occasion, the local ‘big cat’. However, a good friend of mine, a Mr Vic Harris, who lives near Bristol, and who I consider to be a very sane person, had a peculiar sighting of a creature I hope the readers of this blog may be able to identify. His report reads as follows:

'Somewhere on the A39 between Bideford and Bucks Cross, 20/08/08 - 5pm
I don't really like driving, so on holiday I let my wife do all the driving and I get to look around and see if I can spot any interesting animals !!!

We were going pretty slow due to traffic, probably only 10 miles an hour , I was scanning the fields to my left , the field we were level with was empty and quite small only a few hundred yards wide. In the middle of the field was what appeared to be a furry red hump, as I drew level with it I got a pretty good look at it. It was definitely unlike anything I had ever seen roaming about our countryside before.

Overall length - tip of tail to tip of nose 6 to 7 feet

Height - 2 to 3 feet at the top of the hump.

Huge bushy tail.

Long thin face.

Colour was red, but not like a fox more like maroon, like the cushion below, but it also had some rusty brown around the shoulders and head.

The fur was short and course.

The creature seemed to be digging with really thick front legs.

My kids saw it as well and got quite excited as it looked so strange! I know the above description sounds pretty crazy but as you know I've spent a lot of time in the countryside and spent most of my child hood roaming the wilds around the river Wye, so I know what our wild life looks like and I'm very observant and take in visual details well and retain them easily, I usually know what I'm looking at when I see an animal and this was not a fleeting glimpse, I had a really good look at it, so I had time to dismiss any mistaken identities'.

CFZ IN THE PRESS

Fortean zoologists on snow footprint trail
This is North Devon

THE 150-YEAR-OLD mystery of what caused a long trail of hoof-like marks could be solved — thanks to the latest batch of snow.

In February 1855, after a fall of snow, footprints were discovered in Devon, stretching 100 miles from Exmouth to Teignmouth.

For the greater part of their course they followed straight lines. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls.

The prints were dubbed The Devil's Footprints. Then in March last year, similar footprints appeared in a Woolsery garden after a fall of snow.

Read On

CFZ IN THE PRESS

Fortean zoologists on snow footprint trail
This is North Devon

THE 150-YEAR-OLD mystery of what caused a long trail of hoof-like marks could be solved — thanks to the latest batch of snow.

In February 1855, after a fall of snow, footprints were discovered in Devon, stretching 100 miles from Exmouth to Teignmouth.

For the greater part of their course they followed straight lines. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls.

The prints were dubbed The Devil's Footprints. Then in March last year, similar footprints appeared in a Woolsery garden after a fall of snow.

Read On

OLL LEWIS: On the track of Unusual Tracks

When the current cold snap started about ten days ago, Jon and I were talking about things that we might investigate this month, and the subject of the report of the devil’s footprints we had investigated in the village this time last year came up. Our conclusion had been that a rabbit lolloping around in the snow in an unusual manner most likely made them but, Jon hoped, it would be interesting to see if similar tracks turned up in the snow this year in order that we could compare them. I said, “I don’t know about that, but I’d be interested in seeing if anyone sees any tracks from the Hartland cat.”

Several witnesses have seen the Hartland cat in the woods and farmland around the areas of Hartland and Woolsery for a number of years. (And yes, these sightings date from long before we moved into Woolsery before some armchair pundit with half the facts decides to act like an internet tough guy and accuse us of making the whole thing up). If local rumours are to be believed there is more than one of them too. Jon is currently making a film about the big cat sightings in the area and our friend Emily’s investigation of those in the locality that she began after hearing of a sighting of the cat by her uncle.

Around this time of year, two years ago, we received a ‘phone call from Roger Heywood from Duerdon farm just outside Woolsery about a sheep kill. He had seen the sheep happily frolicking about in the field the afternoon before, but the next morning found the animal skinned with most of the flesh removed. Roger did the sensible thing and called his local mystery animal investigation team and we sent Richard Freeman to take a look. After examining the corpse Richard was left in no doubt that a big cat had dispatched the unfortunate sheep.

Today (the 13th of January) Roger made another ‘phone call; he had some unusual prints in the snow. As the light was fading Graham and I quickly grabbed a tape-measure, my notepad, a torch, digital camera and film camera and hot-footed it (well ‘hot-four-wheel-drived it’ technically but lets not split hairs here) to Duerdon Farm, where Roger was waiting. We then followed Roger’s tractor to the field where the tracks had been found. By the time we reached the field, twilight had set in, but in the powerful headlights of the tractor we could see a line of tracks stretching from one end of the field to the other. Most of the tracks were in the deep, otherwise unbroken virgin snow that covered the field but when they reached tracks from a previous visit of the tractor they followed this track for a few paces. When I asked Roger when the tractor track had been made he said it was from yesterday evening and because he found the animal’s tracks when he had been out at about 2pm this means the tracks must have been made between around 5pm and lunchtime the next day. Not wanting to disturb the line of animal tracks, I walked down the existing tractor tracks to get a closer look at the animal tracks.

The tracks themselves were very interesting. One set in deep snow that I examined closely showed that the animal was placing its back paw in the imprint of the forepaw; this is not something canines do when they walk so that, along with the shape of the prints, meant that I could eliminate dogs and foxes from my list of possible culprits. There was no sign of webbing between the toes either, which was a good indication that the tracks were not made by otters. I hesitate slightly to say that these prints were definitely made by a big cat though because of the toes; there are five of them. However, a number of big cat researchers have found anomalies in the paw prints they’ve found in their area, including things like apparently non-retractable claws or polydactylism, which might be consistent with interbreeding among a very small group of individuals over several generations. Keeping it in the family can play havoc with feline Hox genes it would seem and polydactylism in felines it is not all that uncommon; my childhood pet cat, Tigger, started off life as part of a family of stray moggies on a farm and had more than her fair share of digits for example. As well as the possibility of it being a big cat, I would also consider the possibility of the prints having been made by a badger but there are one or two problems with this theory too as none of the tracks show evidence of claws as one would expect to see in a badger track. And then there is the size of the prints.

The print from the forepaw measures about 8cm by 9cm and the back paw print measures 5cm by 6 cm with a stride length of 71cm. This is rather larger than a badger where the forepaws would be expected to be around 4-5 cm and the stride would be about 50cm, so if it is a badger then it would have to be huge and such a large badger could perhaps be considered a cryptid in itself. As well as taking a number of photographs, Graham also made use of the digger scoop of Roger’s tractor in order to be lifted aloft to get some photographs of the tracks stretching across the field. Once we had obtained as many photographs as was possible in the fading light, we returned to Roger’s house where I filmed an interview with him and then it was home to Myrtle Cottage to inform Jon of what we had found.

If the snow hasn’t thawed by tomorrow morning we hope to be able to get plaster casts of some of the prints, but in the meantime take a look at the photos, what do you think? Is it a big cat, an abnormally large super badger, or something else entirely?

Here we should note that Dale had a look at them last night and wrote "Composite Kittycat tracks. Stepping in the same track makes the prints look bigger and with more toes. Last track in picture most accurate one of set." Time will, I hope, tell JD

ONE LEGGED SNOW-CASSOWARY STALKING THE WOODS AT POWLER'S PIECE

Yesterday I told you about Powler's Piece - the strange and rather creepy forest a couple of miles south of the village in which we live.

Yesterday afternoon, while I was working on the new book by Carl Portman (more of which soon), Corinna, Shosh and Gavin took Biggles for an afternoon stroll.

They were in another part of the woods to that where they found the snow dryad on Friday, and they had been looking for footprints.

Amongst the myriad of deer, dogs and smaller creatures was this.

WTF? (as I am sure my younger stepdaughter, and probably Max would say)

I know that it looks like the single print of a cassowary, or maybe a small dinosaur, but it obviously isn't. But what is it?

It is the fact that it is a single imprint in the snow that intrigues me. It probably isn't even a footprint. My best guess is that it is what happens when a bird of prey momentarily lands to capture some poor hapless rodent, but that is only a guess.

It is over to you guys and I, for one, am hoping that it is a giant, one-legged snow cassowary. If it is, then I propose the name Casuarius corinna-and-bigglesi. C'mon boys and girls, don't let a fat cryptozoologist's dreams fail to come true (again).

SNOW DRYAD?

Woolsery is a very strange place at times. About a mile and a half south of the village is an area of Forestry Commission woodland called Powler's Peice.

I have always liked it down there; there are deer a-plenty; both roe and red (and the occasional muntjac); and there are several small ponds that are chocker with palmated newts every spring. But it is undoubtedly freaky.

It has a very strange atmosphere, and Corinna has always refused to ever go there on her own. On several occasions when she has been walking the dog down there with the girls she has felt the sensation of "being watched" and the dog has stopped dead in his tracks in exactly the same place.

Yesterday afternoon she, Shosh and Gavin were taking the dog for his afternoon run (it is far too slippery for me to even risk it) and deep in the woods on one of the rides, traversed only by the occasional Forestry Commission worker and the most intrepid of dog walkers, she found a small, squat, and very ritualistic looking snowman. Or rather snow-woman, because her above-the-waist secondary sexual characteristics were clearly visible. It is only the lack of anything below the waist that stops me labelling her a snowy sheela-na-gig.

It is hard not to see her as a depiction of one of the tree spirits who guard the wood and make visitors feel so uncomfortable.

Very strange.

Even Biggles felt compelled to make several offerings to this snowy dryad (note the lower picture and the yellow stains on her right hand side in the upper).