It was all a bit charmingly "old school"
My wife and I were enjoying a very social afternoon / evening in a large farmhouse kitchen. The type where there is a huge farming family and loads of farm workers and half the village seems to wander in and out. In rural communities this is not uncommon.

During this free-for-all an older chap dropped in and elaborated a tale about how he had met a "biologist" who was searching for wild cats in the area. The type he was looking for evidence of were of puma size. These have been mooted to exist in the UK for some time and there have been a lot of anecdotal reports. The "biologist" had even gone so far as to enlist the help of the local public by getting a letter published in the local paper explaining his aims.

Our friend telling the tale was keen to make sure that we understood that he was convinced that he had seen them and that he was helping the "biologist" locate them in the area.

At this point one of the farmers sons who was in his early twenties (age irrelevant but I don't care), piped up that he had seen one of these cats "scampering over the hill like a brown badger". Much hilarity ensued as you can imagine. this was well before the days of teh interwebs or it could have been much worse.

I felt that it would be a mighty fine idea if this "brown badger" sighting was made a bit more public and duly penned a letter to the local paper; signing it from the farmers son in question. This was then published and two things happened:

1. His life in the pub was made much more amusing for the next few weeks - rural communities tend not to have great deal to dwell upon and any point of interest can hang around a long time. lols well before lols had been invented.

2. The "biologist" began contacting him to see if he could point him in the direction of the sighted "big cat"

I never owned up to writing the letter but having suffered at the hands of this chaps practical jokes for some time previously; one back was worth it.

The other anonymous act was to shop someone for drink driving. I would note that I did it out of safety for the inhabitants of the town. Its a hell of a long story and I have never regretted it for one minute.

Length? Its not the length you want to be concerned about.
(gearanach #wankwankwank, Fri 15 Jan 2010, 22:06, 1 reply)

I've seen a big cat while out in Dorset
Burton Bradstock if anyone is interested.

About the size of a big dog, like a German Shepherd, jet black, but definitely a cat. There were 5 of us, all certain it was moving like a cat.

We found very cat-like footprints where it had been, about the size of a credit card.

I took pictures, but all you can see is that there is some big black animal there, but not what it is. Stroke of bad luck to have taken the shit camera from the office that day.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Sun 17 Jan 2010, 23:28, closed)