Before she gets there, Sheila will be cycling over Toot Hill, where there have been numerous sightings of The Beast of Ongar, a black cat-like creature that has haunted this part of Essex since the 1980s.
An investigation by experts on a BBC1 wildlife series in 1998 concluded that the cat is probably a shy European lynx with black colouring and its rights to remain in Essex, post-Brexit, are therefore as yet unknown. According to the BBC, experts have estimated there may be more than 100 wild cats - mainly leopards and pumas - roaming the British countryside but although sightings of anomalous big cats (“ABCs”) have snowballed since the 1980s, investigators are still searching for irrefutable proof such as bodies (alive or dead) or unambiguous photos or films.
According to The Guardian, the absence of "proof" is odd because of the “huge scale of the phenomenon”. It is estimated that up to 7,000 people a year see panther-like (black) or puma-like (brown) ABCs at large in the UK and “more Britons have now seen a big cat than have ever seen a pig”.
As she is cycling in the dark down the A113 (where many of the sightings have occurred), Sheila will be reassured that local police say that there have been no reported sightings of The Beast since August 2015…
This is our final post. We’re off to Loughton now and, although we shall do our best to bring news from the Big Finish, the next time you see a Face Book post from Sheila, it may even be from Sheila…
SHE DID IT!
No comments:
Post a Comment