Report from Chris Smith
What's being beastly to Blairgowrie
Big cat watchers report that something black and snarling is prowling
By Helena Grace in the Daily Mail September 19 th 1996
THE pretty tourist town in the heart of Perthshire is well used to hunting parties in search of salmon or stags.
Barely 30 minutes from Balmoral and Royal Deeside, Blairgowrie is also a staging post for tourists en route for a sighting of a Royal.
Now it is bracing itself for a different kind of visitor, big game hunters in search of the kind of prey found usually in more exotic parts - a puma or a panther.
The town has joined a long list of Highland areas where 'big cats' have been spotted mainly by farmers - pumas, panthers, leopards and, on one occasion, a highly dubious report of a Bengal tiger on the loose in Sutherland.
The latest sightings, two weeks ago, around Blairgowrie - five in all - of a black beast are being investigated by police and wildlife experts.
The most convincing sighting was by Bobby Sommerville, who lives a mile outside Blairgowrie, in opencountryside bordering the River Erricht.
He had just let his three Border terriers out at night in his floodlit garden. Suddenly, he saw a huge pair of orange eyes glowing at the edge of the floodlighting. His dogs fled into the house.
Mr Sommerville, a 69-year-old retired professor of microbiology, said: 'I was 20 yards away and I realised I was looking at a huge animal.
'It sprang away and I could see it was a panther-like creature. It gave a low, snarling growl then escaped into the fields. I have no doubt it was a puma or something similar.'
Mr Sommerville, a former consultant to Glasgow Zoo and now an Episcopalian minister, has more knowledge than most of wild cats. Unknown to him that night police had received another report of a sighting.
John Stent, a school technician, said his car headlights picked out a puma-like creature near Mr Sommerville's house.
Two more sightings, five miles away in the Alyth area, were reported last week and this week the fifth sighting was made by a woman in Blairgowrie.
John Robertson, who collates sightings for police in Tayside, said: 'There is something but until we capture it or find one dead, we don't know what.'
A police spokesman at Blairgowrie said: 'We've had a number of reports.
Backpackers in the Sidlaw Hills have described seeing a large cat-like creature and now we've had a spate of sightings in this area.'
Ross Shepherd, 21, who runs a family pig business near Mr Sommerville's bungalow, has set traps in a bid to discover what is taking his piglets and making his sows agressive.
'I've not seen anything myself but the piglets were taken out in batches of four. We've set traps and put a man on to patrol, so we'll wait and see what we're facing.'
Big cat watchers claim that up to 50 may be roaming Britain. There have been more than 100 reports since 1983 of the Beast of Exmoor. Last year a leopard was killed by a car at Hayling Island, Hampshire, and a Devon farmer shot a South American leopard. Two pumas were caught in Scotland, near Aviemore 15 years ago and the other near Inverness two years ago.
It is believed that when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was introduced in 1976, many owners who wanted to avoid the demands of a local authority licence dumped their pets in isolated areas of Britain.
Leopard expert Jeremy Usher Smith, of the Highland Wildlife Centre in Kingussie, has investigated several incidents but remains sceptical.
'Nothing has convinced me. The brain can play tricks even though people are sincere in what they think they have seen. I would like to see real evidence.'
© Daily Mail, September 19 th 1996
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