#138 Panther Tales

MISTAKE! MISTAKE! In yesterday's posting, I said that the polar bear expert was Dr. Mitchell Tower. It should have been Dr. Mitchell Taylor. Mea culpa.
Now let's continue Ray Richard's stories about the Osceola Forest in Baker County, Florida. This is the county that used to have the best tasting moonshine in the USA, and maybe it still does. Here's Ray: "When I got older, I started leaving the house until two or three in the morning. When I would come back to the property, I would hear panthers screaming along the creek behind my uncle's house. Dad would say he heard them too. They screamed just like a woman screaming.
When the Game Commission put the panthers in here (in the 1990s), they created a danger. The cats had been fed by humans, and they weren't afraid of men as a result. I saw one lying in the road and inched my truck to within five feet of him. He just looked at me, not moving. Only the tip of his tail kept throbbing.
My hunting buddy went into the woods during archery season. He had a chiropractor's appointment at 9. One of the imported panthers ccame by as there was a feeder. Panthers learn to hang around feeders to see what's coming in to feed. The panther walked around the tree in a circle, trying to pick up my buddy's scent and then lay down by the tree. My buddy had to get to the doctor's and waited for the cat to move on. Finally, he spoke to the panther, and the cat looked up at him, growled, and stayed where he was. Desperate, my buddy shot an arrow next to the big cat, hoping to scare him off. The cat looked at the arrow sticking in the ground next to him, batted it down, and peered up at my buddy and growled another warning. My buddy had to stay in the tree until 10 in the morning before the panther got up and walked away. Then the big cat walked up the trail my buddy had walked down to the treestand on. So he slowly inched out of the woods with his bow partly-drawn constantly looking around him for a charging panther. He finally got back to his truck safely."
I gave my name and phone number to Ray in case he got any news about a Bigfoot. Ray is one man I bet I can count on calling me. Peter "Two-Guns" Nickerson, MS, MSW at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.