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GTG
Was lost but now am found
Joined: 30 Dec 2002
Posts: 2387
Location: Peoria, Arizona, originally from Rocket City, USA
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 Posted: 2/26/2003, 7:45 am Post subject: Virginia got their own Chupacabras? |
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Taken from the Arizona Republic today -
http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0225bigcat26-ON.html
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'Large cat' that attacks baffles town
Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post
Feb. 25, 2003 05:10 PM
CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. - Something big, black and catlike followed Helen White up her back steps and through her kitchen door on a recent wintry afternoon. It bit and clawed her arm and leg as she tried to beat it off with a broom, then bounded into the woods behind her home.
"I was on the telephone, and we were talking and laughing, and something told me, 'You'd better look behind you,' " said White, 76, a lifelong resident of this fishing and vacation village on Virginia's Eastern Shore. "Boy, when I looked, he had the meanest eyes in his head, and they were as green as poison - he had almond-shaped eyes - and he was as black as black paint. And he showed his teeth - I think they must've been like spike nails."
That was the first official sighting of what has come to be called the Chincoteague Panther. Since the Jan. 15 attack on White, Accomack County health officials have gone door-to-door in this town of 4,500, passing out leaflets describing a 40-pound creature. Dozens of other sightings have been reported. On the Chincoteague Police Department Web site, a bulletin about "the large cat" urges residents to "please keep your pets inside" and "supervise your children if they are outside."
"We don't consider this humorous at all," Keith Privett, environmental health supervisor for the county health department, replied when asked if the situation has been exaggerated. "We have a biting animal that's at large."
This is the slow time of year in Chincoteague, when some businesses have "Closed - See You in the Spring" signs out front and a cold wind whips through the frosty marshes. In this sleepy setting, the pantherlike beast quickly became the talk of the town, and debate still rages about whether it was indeed an exotic animal or perhaps just an overgrown house cat or dog. Such doubts aggravate White, who describes herself as "a tough old bird" and still has deep red gashes crisscrossing her arm and leg.
"We had people say, oh, they didn't believe it, and I said, 'For God's sake, I've had cats and dogs all my life, and I've seen pictures of panthers, and I guess I can tell the difference,' " she said hotly. "I hope he gets somebody by the seat of the pants who doesn't believe he's a panther."
In a recent letter to the editor in the weekly Chincoteague Beacon, White informed skeptics that she was "sick and tired of being called a liar." She also warned that "while I was being eaten and bitten and lost a pint of blood, you were safe. He could attack you and your kids also."
Chincoteague Police Chief Edward Lewis has gone on record saying he thinks the creature may have been a big dog, a chocolate Labrador, perhaps. But local health officials are believers. Privett recently described White's account as "a credible story."
"She was scratched and bitten," he said, "and it appeared that no ordinary cat caused those wounds. We had other witnesses who described a very similar animal, including a health department person."
Like White, he believes the animal may be an exotic pet that escaped or has been abandoned, pointing to a telltale clue nearly every spotter has provided: It was wearing a red collar.
No Virginia resident is currently licensed to own a big cat that could fit this description, Privett said. But several Maryland residents have owner's permits, he said, noting the state line is only a few miles away.
"We don't know what it is," he said. "All we can say is we are maintaining vigilance. ... We will continue looking for it until the animal is definitively identified and captured or destroyed."
Certainly, Chincoteague, with its abundant wildlife and its virtually deserted stretches of beach, pine woods and marshland, is tailor-made for such a mystery. Best known for its wild ponies, which are rounded up in a crowd-pleasing event each July, the island also is a bird-watcher's paradise. Its location along the so-called Atlantic Flyway makes it a popular stopover for all types of shorebirds and waterfowl, and some residents have speculated that a big cat on the loose could easily live like a king around here.
Although the area's oyster beds and clam shoals provide income, tourism is the main moneymaker. About 1.5 million tourists a year visit the adjacent 14,000-acre Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.
At the wildlife refuge, a few tourists "have come in and reported seeing a big black cat and wanted us to be alerted," manager John Schroer said. But neither he nor any member of his staff has seen the cat or any sign of it - no scratchings or tracks.
"I think it's an interesting story. I think it's probably not a true panther," he said. "It's not inconceivable that something could've gotten out, but it's highly unlikely. Not that I'm disputing that the lady was attacked, because obviously she was."
For her part, White wants it known that she's a lifelong animal lover, that the only creatures that scare her are snakes and spiders, and that she doesn't want the big cat destroyed. "I don't hold a grudge against the poor panther, because he didn't know any better," said White, who required emergency room treatment after the attack. "He's wild, and he's supposed to be in the jungle or somewhere. Poor thing, when I squealed at him, I scared myself, so I guess I scared him, too."
The widow lives in a trailer home near the water with her three cats, Runt and two others, both named Snowball. Bowls of dry cat food sit on the coffee table like candy dishes, and the cats clearly rule the roost. But they wisely kept their distance, she said, the afternoon the panther appeared.
White believes her back door did not latch shut when she rushed in from sweeping her back steps to answer the telephone, and that the big cat simply slipped in behind her. As it clawed her leg, she said, "the blood was gushing like an oil well. He just took the meat right off - and my legs didn't look exactly like Betty Grable's to begin with."
Bleeding and shaken, she watched out the door, she said, as the big cat disappeared to the east, into the pine trees. "As he was running down that path," she said, "he kind of raised his rump at me, as if to say, 'I'm proud of what I just did.' "
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Who has an idea? I once saw a Bobcat in a neighborhood here in Phoenix, that was supposedly an escaped pet.
GTG
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mtnman
Joined: 06 Jan 2003
Posts: 9
Location: SCOTTSDALE
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 8:27 am Post subject: |
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I LIVE IN NORTH SCOTTSDALE ,AND HAVE WALKED OUT OF MY BEDROOM DOOR, JUST IN TIME TO COME FACE TO FACE WITH A BOBCAT. IT WAS ONLY ABOUT TEN FEET FROM ME. IT JUST STAYED THERE FOR SEVERAL MINUTES THEN WALKED AWAY IN NO BIG HURRY, ABOUT LIKE A NORMAL CAT WOULD DO.  |
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plummer150
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 542
Location: Jersey City, New Jersey
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 9:25 am Post subject: re: |
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Yeah, I've heard a couple stories of that actualy down there. I used to live about an hour from there on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel. Close to Va Beach, Va. It was great. I've heard of bobcats in the western part of Va near Roanoke and all, but not in Chincoteague, right near Md. Wow, that's just amazing.
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Daddee
I once was a slug.
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 2815
Location: Mesa, AZ
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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APPARENTLY MTNMAN LIKES TO TALK IN ALL CAPS.
Just kidding. I thought it was kind of funny.
By the way - welcome to the site MTNMAN.
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"Only small minds want always to be right."
- Louis XIV
"...haven't you lived long enough to know that two men may honestly differ about a question and both be right?"
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paintninaz
Joined: 06 Jan 2003
Posts: 3515
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Daddee wrote: |
APPARENTLY MTNMAN LIKES TO TALK IN ALL CAPS.
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It's easier that way when you only type with 2 fingers! 
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~Tracy
“Friends make the bad times good — and the good times unforgettable.” |
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mtnman
Joined: 06 Jan 2003
Posts: 9
Location: SCOTTSDALE
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Daddee wrote: |
APPARENTLY MTNMAN LIKES TO TALK IN ALL CAPS.
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YEA! YEA! I would expect this from Paintninaz, which I see she has already jumped on the band wagon.  The thing of it is, I only can control two fingers, I'm blind in one eye and can't see out of the other and the computer I working on is from 1912. But I still LOVE to hike!  |
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Daddee
I once was a slug.
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 2815
Location: Mesa, AZ
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 1:33 pm Post subject: |
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the computer I working on is from 1912.
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So - it was a typewriter? How do you get it to connect online?
And - by the way - everyone is fair game around here. We're all about equal opportunity here 
_________________
"Only small minds want always to be right."
- Louis XIV
"...haven't you lived long enough to know that two men may honestly differ about a question and both be right?"
- Abraham Lincoln |
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paintninaz
Joined: 06 Jan 2003
Posts: 3515
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 1:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Daddee wrote: |
| So - it was a typewriter? How do you get it to connect online? |
Ah...the magic of tin cans and string! 
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~Tracy
“Friends make the bad times good — and the good times unforgettable.” |
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mike
What box?
Joined: 30 Dec 2002
Posts: 3134
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| Posted: 2/26/2003, 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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| paintninaz wrote: |
| Daddee wrote: |
| So - it was a typewriter? How do you get it to connect online? |
Ah...the magic of tin cans and string! |
Upgrade from string to fishing line... instant broadband!! 
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Daddee
I once was a slug.
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 2815
Location: Mesa, AZ
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| Posted: 2/27/2003, 11:25 am Post subject: |
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Upgrade from string to fishing line... instant broadband!!
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Is there a prize for this kind of humor? That is outstanding stuff - broadband - you're killing me here at work...
_________________
"Only small minds want always to be right."
- Louis XIV
"...haven't you lived long enough to know that two men may honestly differ about a question and both be right?"
- Abraham Lincoln |
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CatValet
Got Gear?
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 735
Location: Scottsdale
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| Posted: 2/27/2003, 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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My Tech Support will sand the fishing line for you....(inside joke)  -R |
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plummer150
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 542
Location: Jersey City, New Jersey
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| Posted: 3/11/2003, 2:32 pm Post subject: re: |
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On a unrelated topic, but quasi-related topic due to the fact that this thread talks about Virginia; The IRONMAN has once again returned back down to Virginia Beach, Virginia! This is great. Now that it's warm down here right now, I will definitly be hiking it up! Tons of places around here to hike and old ones that I used to do that I'll defitily be checking out again. Time to get back into shape!!!      
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