Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 3:29 pm
i will produce a pic of a black panther.. a black panther rally in west jackson that is.....
ufgators68 wrote:Panther spotter has photo to back up his sighting stories
By John Howell Sr.
Roy Durham has been seeing panthers near his home in the Enid Dam backwaters for over 20 years. This week he produced a photo that he said proves it.
Officials of the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks are skeptical.
That's been the official position of the state's wildlife experts for years. And for years people all over the state have claimed to have seen the elusive creatures.
"We get reports of panthers all year, ever since I was a kid", said Conservation Officer Supervisor Charlie Ingram. "We've never had any legible tracks or photos."
Durham took his photo last summer "when the ground was so hard that you'd have to put his paw down on the ground and hit it with a mallet to get a track," he said.
"I took one (photo) and then was going to make him look at me, so I whistled, and when I took the picture he was gone; I snapped the shot and got nothing." The tail of the feline in question is not visible in the photo, but it appears to drape over the opposite side of the limb over which its body is stretched. Durham said that when he has seen the cats at other times, a long tail has been visible. Once he saw the feline in his back yard, sitting on its haunches "like a little puppy."
"We've seen him a bunch of times," Durham added. And heard him. "When it screams it sounds like a woman, then kind of trails off," he said. He described the feline as "black as tar" and about 34 to 36 inches long.
That raises a flag for Richard Rummel of the Mississippi Museum Natural Science who said that the variety of panther that was once native to this part of Mississippi was a variation of the Florida panther. "There's never been a black one in North America," Rummel said.
There are some black variations among leopards and jaguars, Rummel said. "I've been checking on cat sightings for years," he added. The last sightings of Florida panthers in most southeastern states came around the beginning of the 20th century with some isolated sightings as late as the 1920s, Rummel continued.
John Audubon during his float trip down the Mississippi River to study and draw the flora and fauna wrote of encountering the panthers in the Coldwater River bottom.
"I feel like if we have any (panthers) in this state, somewhere somebody would have run over one, Ingram said.
http://www.panolian.com/ You have to scroll down to where it says "MORE" on the right side of the page. Should be the first link.
Saw the article. Saw no picture. My question is: Why would a newspaper reporter do a story a/b a guy WITH A PHOTO OF A CAT and not require the guy to give up the photo for his article. No photo---No article--- Duhhhhhhhhh..........
MEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWW!
