If you ever
Plan to motor west
Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best
Get your kicks on Route 66

Route 66, by Bobby Troup, 1946.

Following up on the earlier story of a “black panther” being caught on video near Joplin, Missouri, it is always good to hear results of an investigative inquiry to test height and more.

The above video taken on Saturday, July 5, at a company on old Route 66, east of Galena, Kansas, is of a domestic cat, says Matt Peek, fur-bearer biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

The department did what they should have to determine how big the cat was. Peek and two others from the department traveled to Galena, last Thursday, July 17th, with a digital camera and a 15-inch-tall by 64-inch-long piece of cardboard to conduct their own experiment. The cardboard was placed in the spot where the cat is seen on the surveillance video and was photographed.

“The length was meant to represent an approximate length of a small adult or subadult mountain lion, but the lion would be 1.5 or two times as tall as the cardboard,” Peek wrote in his report. “The animal in the surveillance footage is nowhere near that.”

He wrote that based on comparisons of the surveillance footage and the experiment photos, the animal in the video is just over 20 inches long, consistent with a house cat.

Peek wrote that mountain lions have proportionally smaller heads than house cats, and mountain lions have proportionally longer tails than house cats.

And the large paw prints found at the scene? Peek wrote that he viewed photos of the prints and saw others while in Galena, and he identified them as dog tracks.

Reached by phone, Peek said he would have been surprised to find a cougar or mountain lion in the Galena area, because it is not part of their habitat. He said though almost every community has a legend about a black panther or cougar, it’s always someone else who had seen it.

He said the only feline found in the wild around the region is the bobcat.

Peek said he doesn’t expect his findings to settle the debate for everyone.

“I know there will be people who question anything the state does,” he said. “I think the results are pretty conclusive.”

Galena police Chief Larry Delmont said he is satisfied with the report. He said he would have been concerned about public safety if officials had determined that the animal was a cougar or other big cat.

Source: “Galena’s wild cat chase over,” by Roger McKinney, The Joplin Globe, July 22, 2008.

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Take a trip down and over from Route 66. You may help the important things from the past be preserved by assisting the International Cryptozoology Museum to survive, via a donation, greatly needed, as you may directly send a check, money order, or, if outside the USA, an international postal money order made out “International Cryptozoology Museum” to

International Cryptozoology Museum
c/o Loren Coleman
PO Box 360
Portland, ME 04112

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