Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 26

In the November 28, 2009 posting of his Cryptomundo website (www.cryptomundo.com), Loren Coleman listed a number of “Phantom Felids” that had been sighted in Belgium, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. In each instance, the witnesses claimed to have been startled and frightened by seeing the image of a large cat, a creature that had no geographical right to be where it was.

Coleman makes an interesting point that the Eastern Cougar in North America has become a semi-mystical creature, such as Bigfoot is in other sections of the United States and Canada. Although the cougar once thrived in great numbers in Ontario, the last living member of that feline tribe was sighted in 1938. About the same time, the cougar was declared extinct in that part of Canada.

The problem is that no one got around to informing the cougars that they had become extinct in Ontario. Over the past decade, Coleman reports, a number of reported and confirmed sightings have forced many wildlife experts to ponder if they should reconsider and pronounce the cougar “endangered,” rather than extinct.

Phantom Black Cats have been sighted in Belgium, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States (art by Ricardo Pustanio).

If one is determined to collected samples of DNA through hair and scat, solid evidence can be found to support the 500 eye-witness accounts since 2002 that have been made by farmers who claim that cougars have been munching on their livestock or of hunters who swear that the big critter that they spotted in the forests was no deer or large dog.