MYSTERIOUS animals strike a chord in our psyche and the Highlands has
a rich tradition in such sightings. The newspapers last week featured
the “beast of Embo”, sighted by sisters after 18 sheep had been killed.
It sent my mind whirring back to 1980 and the celebrated Cannich puma
which generated the kind of tabloid frenzy nowadays generated by
Jordan’s Hindenburg-like cleavage or Cheryl Cole’s latest lip gloss.
There had been mystery animal sightings in the North a long time
previously. The Daily Express reported in 1927 that in rural
Inverness-shire sheep and goats had been attacked by an animal a
shepherd described as “like a leopard but without spots”. A strange
description unless it was the first case of a leopard actually changing
his spots. Like the guy telling his mate: “I’ve just spotted a leopard”
and his pal replying: “Don’t be daft, they’re born with spots”.
Anyway, The Express reported that traps were set and a creature was
caught which was sent to London Zoo where it was identified as a lynx.
Later it turned out London Zoo had no record of receiving any such
animal. It was the biggest animal tall tale since there were three bears
and one married a giraffe. The other two putREAD MORE
The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper column-inches than any other cryptozoological subject. There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. Curated by Carl Marshall and Olivia McCarthy
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