Читать книгу The Monster Book - Nick Redfern - Страница 12

Reports of large black cats proliferate in both the United States and the U.K. They have become known as “Alien Big Cats”—or ABCs—due to the fact that such creatures are seen in areas where they have no business being seen. After all, the U.K. is certainly not home to any known large cats. And, ABCs in the United States are often spotted in areas where government officials maintain no such creatures roam. Far less well known is the equally curious saga of the ABCs of Australia.

A subject that, for years, typically only attracted the attention of cryptozoologists and monster hunters, it was thrust into the limelight in late 2008 when the Australian government decided to make its thoughts and data on the subject known publicly. It was September of that year when Nathan Rees, the Premier of New South Wales, Australia, declared openly and to the media that the stories of the ABCs roaming the land were not the stuff of hoaxes, misidentification, or fantasy. The creatures really existed—even if no one knew, exactly, what they were.

The report … concluded that no such creatures were prowling around, never mind slaughtering the nation’s farm animals.

Notably, this statement was completely at odds with comments Rees made in August 2008, when he essentially stated that the subject had no merit whatsoever. What changed his opinion was a large dossier of ABC sightings in Australia—collected by elements of the Australian government—which was provided to him in early September and which made for impressive reading. It was because of Rees’s words that Australian officials decided that rather than just collect such reports and file them away, they would finally embark on an investigation of those same reports. The program, which focused on the State of Victoria (a particular hotspot for alien big cat encounters), began in earnest in 2010, at the order of the Victorian National Party’s Peter Ryan.

Two years later, specifically on September 18, 2012, the long awaited report was finally published. It was not the kind of thing that many people—and particularly farmers who claimed to have lost substantial numbers of animals to the ABCs—were anticipating and/or hoping for. The report—titled Assessment of Evidence for the Presence in Victoria of a Wild Population of “Big Cats”—concluded that no such creatures were prowling around, never mind slaughtering the nation’s farm animals.

The Minister for Agriculture and Food Security, Peter Walsh, tried to assure the skeptical populace, as well as the doubtful media, that no Alien Big Cat had ever been “detected in a formal wildlife survey, shot by a hunter or farmer or killed by a vehicle and no skeletal remains have ever been found. Nor have ‘big cats’ been identified in wildlife studies involving the analysis of thousands of mammalian fecal samples.”

So, what then were people seeing? According to Australian authorities, nothing stranger than overfed, regular cats that had turned feral. Many people who followed the story suggested and suspected that the government was playing the matter down, to avoid panicking the population by admitting that large and dangerous cats were on the loose. Despite extensive criticisms of the report, the Australian government was utterly unmoved: “On the basis of the report’s conclusions, further work focusing on obtaining primary evidence to conclusively rule out the existence of ‘big cats’ is not warranted.”

That is where matters still stand today—somewhat frustratingly. Ranchers and members of the Australian public continue to see Alien Big Cats, and on a disturbingly regular basis. And not just in Victoria, but all across Australia. Can so many people all be mistaken by nothing stranger than tubby feral cats? Australian authorities say, “Yes!” The eyewitnesses, however—and hardly surprisingly—hold very different views. Unless something unforeseen occurs out of the blue—such as the killing or capturing of an ABC in Australia—it’s unlikely that situation will change.