Mystery creature prowls Advance
Well, folks, I've done the best I can do to get a clear still photo of the creature spotted by Sgt. David Garner of the Advance Police Department a few weeks ago. However, the video was taken at night from across the highway, and the enlarged still photo is pretty darn fuzzy.
I've had a pretty sharp guy working on the project for about two weeks, since before I posted my first creature alert on this blog site - and each time I get another photo, it only looks a bit less blurry.
I emailed the still photo to my daughter, who first thought it looked like a hampster and then, in the next photo, a hyena. Of course, neither of these is a remote possibility, given the size of the animal and the long tail. Never have seen an 80-pound hampster with a long tail... As for the hyena idea, I don't see it.
Sgt. Garner was in the police cruiser in the Town & Country parking lot when he first saw the animal across Highway 25. By the time he started the video camera, the animal was in Brian Bess's car lot. In the video, you first see its legs, as it walks from behind a truck. Then, when it comes out from the truck, it walks across the lot, looking back toward the police car, moving like a cat.
Sgt. Garner says that there have been incidents with bobcats trying to catch and eat the wild puppies that sometimes populate that thicket back behind Semo RediMix. The police have been called out when residents have heard screaming in the region. At that time, Sgt. Garner saw only the heads of the cats, so he couldn't confirm what type of cat it was. Large paw prints have reportedly been found, but I have no visual proof of this.
Who'd have thought that Advance had such wild regions within the city limits?
Several farmers in the area have reported seeing big cats at the edge of their fields when they were plowing, but, of course, they have no opportunity to catch them on film. Not many farmers carry cameras on their tractors. (Tractor-cams??)
Sgt. Garner did confirm a suspicion that I've had: The increased corn production has created a lot of cover for large animals, so that might explain why they've moved into the area.
A hunter friend of mine (Bob Rhodes) who saw the video thinks that the cat is young. If that's true, it could just be moving through. When I did my first report on big cats in the area last year, the conservation agent said that they could travel a 200-mile range.
For now, we'll have to be content to speculate on what the creature is. Cat? Dog? Hyena? Hampster? A Loch Ness type creature that has crawled up out of the drainage ditch? ....Or maybe swamp gas???
What do you think is prowling Advance?????
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The last time I talked to a MCD rep, he insisted that all the cougar sightings in the area were "usually yellow labs," which is simply preposterous! Farmers, hunters, and outdoorsmen (and women) in the area do not mistake yellow labs for cougars! Like a neighbor said, "How stupid do they think we are??"
I hadn't thought about the Workman's Comp problems they might incur!! Hahahahaha!
Right now, a friend of mine in Seattle has it, trying to work some magic to get a clear shot --- but to no avail. I'll ask him to send it back......but I seriously doubt that your computer will play it, if Dorothy's won't. Still, we can bring in the Big Guns (Todd) and see what he can do.
That's a pretty detailed Outer Limits description. Does the creature look like the alien or Robert Culp??
I don't see the coyote resemblance....The animal seems too upright for a coyote....but, of course, the tail precludes the coyote, anyway... The part that throws me is the face. Would a cat have such a wide face? It's hard to separate the background from the figure itself.
You'll notice how I've been avoiding our own local Conservation agents......but I will let them see everything eventually. It's just that I don't want to hear them tell me once again that the animal is a yellow lab..
Also, I finally got around to looking at the cougar photos on Wikipedia, and there's that wide face and the white markings that threw me off when I first saw our Advance "mystery boy." They DO have what appears to have a wide face, which tapers off to a small mouth. (Small, I'm sure, until they open it to show all those teeth!)
The Wikipedia site is really quite extensive, and it has a "range map," which shows clearly that the cats are not native to this area. I guess the map needs to be updated, but I don't think that's gonna happen if the wildlife experts in our area don't change their stance on yellow labs.. We KNOW that yellow labs are idigenous to Southeast Missouri...
I'll also find out what my Seattle friend's video link is.
You have to watch closely, as it's a nighttime shot from across the highway, and the view is further obscured by the night lights in Brian Bess's car lot. Watching it again after several weeks, I'm amazed that we were able to get ANY kind of still photo. That's really a looooooong shot!