Serval Caught In New Orleans

When Carl Henderson stepped into the backyard of his mother’s Uptown home Tuesday (February 17, 2009) at mid morning, he was checking out a neighbor’s report of raccoon playing about.

He found something quite different.

Henderson encountered what looked like a small cheetah, 22 pounds and lean, two feet tall in the arch of its back, a long tail, with black and brown spots. An intimidating, lovely feline in an unlikely spot.

“The spots and design on it, the natural nature thing,” the 58-year-old New Orleanian said later in the day, still flabbergasted at the mysterious find. “An artist couldn’t do that. It was a sight for the eyes.”

What he found resting in the shade was a female serval, a small African wildcat, the possession of which is illegal for private citizens in Orleans Parish, Audubon Nature Institute officials said.

Henderson’s first instinct was to call the cops, nervous that the wildcat might harm children in the vicinity. But before the law arrived, he somewhat boldly tried to befriend the cat.

He took it water, then slices of American cheese, then pieces of turkey wing.

The cat lapped up the offerings, but bared her teeth and hissed when he drew near.

“I guess I got a little bit too close to his perimeter, and I kindly gave him his respect and backed off,” Henderson said. He guessed that the cat’s relatively calm demeanor meant it was someone’s pet: “If it had been aggressive, it would have had my butt.”

The official response to Henderson’s 911 call was robust. A small crowd of police officers pulled up at his home in the 700 block of Jena Street, initially leery, he said, of stepping into the yard. An agent from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries came too, as did staffers from the Audubon Institute, which runs the zoo.

Henderson was shooed inside the house. Audubon’s veterinarian staff tranquilized the cat with a dart gun, then captured it in a net, spokeswoman Sarah Burnette said. Late in the day, the animal was resting in the zoo’s hospital as police tried to determine where it came from and whether it has an owner, legal or otherwise.

“You wouldn’t just find a serval hanging around Uptown normally,” Burnette said, adding that the cat is likely someone’s exotic pet. But such a creature is nothing to play with, said Maria Davidson, large carnivore programs manager for the state wildlife service.

“It’s a wildcat,” she said. “It’s not as big as a lion or a tiger, but it could certainly do damage to a person.”

Servals typically feed on small animals such as frogs, birds and rabbits, although they occasionally have been seen taking larger game, such as small antelopes.

Audubon Institute officials have agreed to provide the serval a home, probably at the institute’s Species Survival Center in Lower Coast Algiers, if no other option is available.

Henderson relished his brush with the wild kingdom just off Magazine Street, though he was perturbed that no one from officialdom got back to him about the cat’s fate.

“They told me to go back inside because the cat, you know, might have other options,” he said. “They didn’t say hello, they didn’t say goodbye.” “Man finds African wildcat in Uptown backyard,” by Coleman Warner, The Times-Picayune, Wednesday, February 18, 2009.

Servals, servals, servals.

There does appear to be several sightings of servals, now and then, in the Midwest, now doesn’t there?

Glad they caught one, and there’s not just a fuzzy cell-cam photo of a “serval-like” cat.

Thanks to Bart Portal of New Orleans for this one.

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.

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