Day Six - Lyn Fountain

There is no conclusive evidence that escaped or released exotic big cats are living and breeding in the British countryside, but people continue to be fascinated by the possibility. Acres of magazine and newsprint and infinite amounts of webspace have been filled debating the arguments and reporting sightings. Big cat sightings are like UFOs; they seem to arrive in clusters. As soon as one report airs in the news, several more instances then come to light. A few years back, a spate of reported sightings occurred here in Norfolk; one of my husband’s colleagues, driving at night, picked up in his headlights a large, sandy-coloured cat leaping across the road.

Tales of the ‘Beast of Exmoor’, the ‘Beast of Bodmin’, the ‘Surrey Puma’ and others have captured the public imagination and become the stuff of legends. Eye witness reports of large black cats are remarkably similar in their detail: a muscular body, long tail, flashing eyes, coal black coat, springing gait. The description seems to have much in common with spectral black dogs, again prevalent across much of the country. Here in Norfolk we have Black Shuck, the ghostly hound made famous in Conan Doyle’s ‘Hound of the Baskervilles. There appears to be something in the human psyche that is drawn towards the mystery and power of wild animals. Perhaps it is the tension between the civilisation of humans and the raw state of other animals, which means we are both drawn to and repelled by the idea of a captive animal returned to the wild. It is a human characteristic to try and control nature, thereby neutralising the threat of the unknown and the unpredictable. Unfortunately it is animals that usually come off worse in these encounters, particularly when human population growth is putting so much pressure on habitat.

Tomorrow- Photo Gallery