May 6, 2009

Mystery Animal in Iredell County

The Statesville Record and Landmark has the latest on new reports of what appear to be Mystery Felines in North Carolina.

A love of outdoor activities has led Dennis and Joan Carter across the country. They’ve seen animals of every stripe and size.

On Monday afternoon, while returning from a weekend camping jaunt at Kerr Scott Reservoir in Wilkes County, the couple was startled to the point of awe when a huge cat crossed in front their vehicle on N.C. Highway 115 in northern Iredell County.

“It was a cat, I’m sure of that,” Dennis said. “It didn’t look anything like a dog or coyote. It walked and moved like a cat, not like a dog.”

The couple said they spotted the animal on Wilkesboro Highway near Taylor Springs Road and Rupard Road. Dennis described it as being light gray in color and about 6 feet long, including “a long curled tail.”

The animal was traveling west direction with a “loping” gait until it reached the street.

“And then it took off,” Dennis said, “and jumped down into the creek.”

The question is: What did the Carters see?

Dennis swears it was a cougar or a big cat very similar to it.

But Tanya Cline, manager of the wildlife habitats at Grandfather Mountain, said such a thing “is extremely unlikely.”

As far as she knows, the only two cougars in western North Carolina — Nikata, a female, and Aspen, a male — are under her care at the habitat.

“They have been extirpated from this area,” she said, using a term synonymous with “local extinction” and meaning “no longer indigenous.”

In other words, cougars used to live in North Carolina but have moved on.

Also, Cline said, cougars (which, she said, are also known as mountain lions, panthers, pumas and upward of 100 other names) are brown or tan in color, not gray.

The Carters, who live just outside Statesville’s city limits, are firm about the color of the animal they saw.

So Cline is stumped. She said she has heard rumors of gray-colored cougars but knows of none that has ever been captured.

“One possibility,” she said, “is that this was an exotic pet someone had that the owners let go or that got away.”

Cline is not denying that the Carters saw a big cat and says there have been other sightings of cougars around the state.

“A lot of people claim to have seen them,” she said. “But the State of North Carolina says they’re not here.”

Greg Jenkins of Wildlife in North Carolina magazine agrees that if the Carters did see a cougar it is almost certainly one that had been in captivity.

“There are people in the state who have them,” he said. “And they do get away.”

Jenkins re-emphasized that the state’s official word on the matter is that there are no naturally wild cougars in the state.

“But they’re sexy,” Jenkins added. “And people want to see them. But they can also kill people.”
Whatever the Carters saw, they are concerned the animal may do damage to livestock.

Dennis said he contacted the Iredell County Animal Services & Control Department, which directed him to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

“It has to eat,” Carter said. “And it’s big enough to be really dangerous.”

Source: “Mystery animal roaming Iredell,” by Jim McNally, Statesville R&L, May 6, 2009>

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Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Filed under Alien Big Cats, Cryptid Canids, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Eyewitness Accounts, Mystery Cats