Pumas are large, cat-like animals which are found in America. When reports came
into London Zoo that a wild puma had been spotted forty-five miles south of London,
they were not taken seriously. However, as the evidence began to accumulate, experts
from the Zoo felt obliged to investigate, for the descriptions given by people who claimed
to have seen the puma were extraordinarily similar.
The hunt for the puma began in a small village where a woman picking blackberries saw
‘a large cat’ only five yards away from her. It immediately ran away when she saw it, and
experts confined that a puma will not attack a human being unless it is cornered. The
search proved difficult, for the puma was often observed at one place in the morning
and at another place twenty miles away in the evening. Wherever it went, it left behind
it a trail of dead deer and small animals like rabbits. Paw prints were seen in a number
places and puma fur was found clinging to bushes. Several people complained of ‘cat-like
noises’ at night and a businessman on a fishing trip saw the puma a tree. The experts
were now fully convinced that the animal was a puma, but where had it come from?
As no pumas had been reported missing from any zoo in the possession of a private
collector and somehow managed to escape. The hunt went on for several weeks, but
the puma was not caught. It is disturbing to think that a dangerous wild animal is still
at large in the quiet countryside.