The Beast of Bodmin Moor!

[peter]

In the South-West of the UK, there is a barren and unforgiving area of land known as Bodmin Moor where the main features to break the high rolling tors and scrubby brown pasture are the yellow gorse flowers of summer, the stone walls and fields of scattered cottage settlements and the ever present wind that whines and howls in from the west. In the late 1970's and 80's a series of sightings, said to be of a big 'cat' like animal, sent the UK press into a frenzy. Together with annecdotal evidence of the occasional sheep being killed and partially eaten, this was seen as proof that there was a large cat or family there of breeding on the moor. Much doubt remained [and does to this day] as to the veracity of these stories however, and Ministry of Agriculture professionals consistantly pooh-poohed the ideas as fantasy and hysteria and simple story-mongering by the press. Now I will add my penn'o'worth to the tale, for what it's worth and you guys here on the Watch are privelaged to see the first [and probably only] version in print of the following tale, for I believe I am probably in posession of more of the facts pertaining to this odd story than any person alive.

In the 70's I was involved in a veterinary practice in the southern most county of the country, some twenty or so miles from the said moor. I knew well, and as friends, many of the people who lived in the area - country people who knew the moor, knew it's ways, knew it's hunting [both legally and illegally] with more intmacy than any ministry official with a degree sitting behind a desk could ever have mustered.

One man, who the Ministry used to scent out badger dens for testing for the presence of tuberculosis was a keen 'lamper' in his out of hours [and often slightly less than 'kosher'] activities. One night, he recalled to me, he caught, in the beam of his lamp a large tawny cat, the size of a labrador and watched while it jumped over a stone feild-wall and dissapeared. The second man I knew who encountered 'the beast' was the Master of a local hunt, who while out shooting with a friend one night had again caught the animal in his beam while his friend had the gun. "Shoot it!" He whispered furiously, but his friend would not do so {10/10 from me for this!} and lowered the gun. The man told me that had he had posession of the gun at that moment the animal would have been dead point blank - and I believe him! In fact, neither of these guys were people who would make a mistanke when it came to country matters involving the animals of their terratory. If these men say they saw the 'beast' - then they saw it. A third man recounted an encounter with it to me, but as he was by his own admision drunk at the time, I will not recount it.

Ok - the above to me is evidence enough that something was/is out there, but the question remains what ..... and how? Well again, it is not definative, but I might just be able to shed some light on this. In the 70's before the 'Dangerous Animals Act' was in place - or was at least very poorly administered, there was in my town a zoo that, in order to draw in some of the tourist trade, had a selection of caged animals on show to the public. Amongst their exhibits was a cage of pumas that, foolishly, they allowed to interbreed to the extent that they were forced to bring in a number of litters of kits for euthanasia, being the product of brother sister matings. Our practice soon sorted this problem by vasectomising the male puma's, but our Principle often suspected that the keepers had possibly kept [out of misplaced but totally understandable kindness] some of the kits, which, while managable as youngsters, would soon become potentially dangerous as they grew to size. How then to dispose of an unwanted animal that you are not supposed in Law to have; well a large local area of moorland might seem a good idea. This is speculative of course, and I have a couple of other ideas of equal possibility. Firstly, when the above mentioned act was introduced it became an offense to keep certain listed animals [the puma being one] without inspections of premises and the purchase of an expensive licence. Again under these conditions, a quiet trip up to the moor one night might seem like an easier option than a long and expensive proceedure to comply with the demands of the law. A third possibility returns to the said zoo, and recounts a story told to me by one of the vets who had been sent to inspect the place under the newly introduced licencing act requirements, and runs as follows. He inspected the premises as per his instructions, part of which involved attention to the secure containment of the zoo's collection. Checking the rear of the puma enclosure he came across a square sheet metal panel in the weld-mesh enclosure wall, where the holding screws were so rusted that three of them had come assunder and the panel had swung aside, held only in place by the fourth. There was, out of sight he said, a hole large enough for one of the cats to have squeezed through without difficulty. Now - if you were to look on a map at that zoo, you would see that alongside its grounds, in-fact alongside the back of that very cage, runs a railway line, and that railway line runs uninterupted, with a thick belt of gorse and bramble and ferns on either side, straight to the heart of .......you guessed it.....Bodmin Moor!

[Avatar]

Pumas on the loose in rural England...Sounds like a Sun headline...

--A

[peter]

It was Av - many times [along with companying grainy photographs etc]. I hope they still survive, whatever they were!

{Do you know Bodmin Moor by the way; it's a very wild and scrubby sort of place; much more so than the two other south-west moors, and actually quite dangerous to the unwary. I love it the best of the three.}

[Ps. One day I'll tell you about 'Andorra - The Shame of Brittain'; a Daily Mirror center page headline about another affair I was involved in. ]

[Sorus]

Checking the rear of the puma enclosure he came across a square sheet metal panel in the weld-mesh enclosure wall, where the holding screws were so rusted that three of them had come assunder and the panel had swung aside, held only in place by the fourth. There was, out of sight he said, a hole large enough for one of the cats to have squeezed through without difficulty. Now - if you were to look on a map at that zoo, you would see that alongside its grounds, in-fact alongside the back of that very cage, runs a railway line, and that railway line runs uninterupted, with a thick belt of gorse and bramble and ferns on either side, straight to the heart of .......you guessed it.....Bodmin Moor!

One would hope the keepers would notice if they were missing a puma, though it's not impossible to imagine a cat going out for a prowl and returning in time for dinner.

[peter]

Undoubtedly they would have noticed Sorus, but would they have said anything? Back in those days alas, neither zoo keepers nor zoo management were as they are today; the manager at this time rarely ever visited the zoo, prefering instead to collect his wages and spend most of his time on the golf-course. Standards were sufficiently lax that almost anything can be imagined! On one occasion a fully grown lion walked from it's cage out onto the grass frontage, separated from the visitors only by a 12 inch high picket fence. They stood there, frozen in open mouthed amazement and the ion, captive bred and full up anyway (and not used to a human diet) walked round in a circle and then back into his compound where he obviously felt more at home, having been born and spent all his life there.

[Avatar]

Sounds like something out of Gerald Durrell.

{Do you know Bodmin Moor by the way; it's a very wild and scrubby sort of place; much more so than the two other south-west moors, and actually quite dangerous to the unwary. I love it the best of the three.}

Sadly not, my activity in Cornwall was much further south.

--A