Alien Big Cats

Berkshire Beast Blarney?

A copy (above) of an allegedly actual mountain lion (puma, cougar) track sold commercially by Acorn Products. As you may recall, in the recent posting entitled “Eastern Cougar Catfights”, I discussed the on-going battles between the older pro-eastern felid group, Eastern Puma Research Network (EPRN), and the newer more debunking Eastern Cougar Foundation (ECF). ECF member and mushroom expert Joseph Lankalis has “demanded” that I publish his contribution below, before it goes up on the eastern cougar page. To demonstrate how personal this feud has become, sure, I’ll post this. Lankalis’ argument may have some merit but the way he [...]

Eastern Cougar Mysteries

On display at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology: The verified casts (one shown above, the other below) of credible eastern cougar tracks found in Massachusetts in 1990. Naturalist Helen McGinnis’ of the Eastern Cougar Foundation, during January 2007, has raised some questions about the above during their “Project Hoax.” A Mystery Melanistic Felid captured on film in Florida turned out to be a black bobcat. Helen McGinnis, in the late 1970s, gathered evidence and privately published her findings in papers widely distributed to cryptozoologically-minded associates saying she thought upwards of 40% of the mystery cats in that state were melanistic. [...]

Track of the Cat’s Bezzerides Dies

A.I. Bezzerides, 98, a novelist-turned-screenwriter best known for post-World War II film noir classics such as Kiss Me Deadly, On Dangerous Ground and Thieves’ Highway , died January 1, 2007, after a brief illness. Albert Isaac Bezzerides was born Aug. 9, 1908, in Samsun, Turkey. His mother was Armenian and his father a Turkish-speaking Greek. He moved to America with his parents by age 2, and they settled in Fresno, where his father worked in the fields before becoming a produce-hauling trucker. He is perhaps most remembered for a style he applied to his best-remembered work, the 1938 novel Long [...]

Top Twelve Black Bobcat Hot Spots

UPDATED: January 14, 2007. Photograph of a cryptid black felid taken late in 2005 in Florida, by a Georgia professor (credit Ben Willis) that probably is a melanistic bobcat (Lynx rufus floridianus). Based on one of yesterday’s melanistic bobcat blog comments, here are my promised suggestions for the hot spots to go observe these black felids. Top Twelve Locations To See Black Bobcats 1-10. South Florida. If there’s one place that has produced the most melanistic bobcats, it would be this south central east Florida coast county that lies next to the Okeechobee Swamp region, specifically, Martin County, Florida. Ten [...]

Mystery Black Felid Photo: Identified

An update on the mystery black felid photograph (see various enhancements on this page) reveals some new information, which, in context, makes much sense. The picture was taken December 2005, according to the photographer’s letter shared with me last night by felid researcher Ben Willis. The photo was taken by a retired biology professor from a Georgia university, Dr. Edward Yeargers . Dr. Yeargers had seen the cat, which he identified as a black bobcat, “several times” in his yard. The location of his yard – Palm City, Florida. Palm City is located in Martin County, Florida. The professor wrote, [...]

Nashville And Bobbing Black Cats

Nashville Cats, play clean as country water Nashville Cats, play wild as mountain dew Nashville Cats, been playin’ since they’s babies Nashville Cats, get work before they’re two — by John B. Sebastian, Lovin’ Spoonful, 1967. Is this cryptid black cat a melanistic bobcat (Lynx rufus/Felis rufus)? Back on November 19, 2006, I wrote about the sightings and then videotape of a large short-tailed cat seen in Nashville, Tennessee. Speculations covered caracal, lynx, and bobcat. The two images below are from the video taken of the Tennessee Mystery Cat: Ben Willis of Bigcats.org brings to my attention that a road-killed [...]

Black Panthers in Illinois

Black panthers in Illinois are not merely melanistic jaguars far from home. I grew up in central Illinois (1947-1965, 1969-1974) and went to undergraduate school at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (1965-1969). I was out searching for black panthers when I was 14, for example, in Macon County, doing field work on big mystery cat sightings in southeast Illinois when I was 16, and slushing through swamps in southern Illinois more than I was in some classes during my college years at SIU. Needless to say, all those first few years, I wasn’t writing too much about what I was doing, because [...]