Big Cat Updates

I haven’t been able to post anything for a few days so I thought now would be a good time to give everyone a brief update on what has been going on and what I have been up during that time. I’ve actually been quite busy.

If you keep up with the blog you know that I had a reader email me saying he had hit a large black cat with his vehicle while traveling a central Texas highway. While this individual did not stop to see if he had killed the animal, he did collect a fair amount of black hair from the bumper and grill of his vehicle upon arriving home. He mailed the hairs in question to me and I have forwarded them on to a friend of mine for microscopic analysis. The analysis should, at the very least, tell us whether the animal in question was a feline of some kind (based on the scale pattern) and/or rule out other, more common, critters like a hog or a dog. Should the black hairs come back as belonging to a cat of some kind, they, along with the large sized described by the witness, will provide intriguing, though not conclusive, evidence that the black panthers of Texas might actually exist. I hope to have the results on the hairs back within 7-10 days.

Within 24 hours of receiving this report, I was contacted for the second time by a woman living in the Waxahachie area who claims to have had a very close encounter with a very large black cat outside of her home recently. She continues to hear loud screams and roars, “like the sound of a woman being murdered,” during the night coming from the wooded area near her house. She has invited me to post a game camera or two on the property to see if we might get a photo of the culprit. To this point, however, weather has severely hampered my efforts to get up to her place and I have been unable to get the cameras placed. I’m hopeful I will be able to do so by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, closer to home, I’ve received a report that a mountain lion has been spotted just north of Temple in the same vicinity where a couple of horse kills took place two summers ago. The witness said that the big cat was clearly seen at 7:30 a.m. just a few days ago and that a neighbor had lost a calf to a predator of some kind just two nights before that. It is possible this is the same cougar that was slinking around two summers ago. I will be posting cameras in this area as well but the same bad weather that has prevented me from getting up to Waxahachie has kept me away from this area as well. Once the weather clears and the creek on the property in question recedes a bit, I will get at least two cameras up in the hopes of finally getting the photo that proves mountain lions frequent this part of Texas on more than just an occasional basis.

So, you can see there is a lot going on right now. Mix in my “real” job and the duties that come with being a husband and father and you have a pretty busy guy. I will provide updates on these stories and more as details become available.