Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

failing, and Harris fell ill with appendicitis and
called the search off. A documentary film about
the event, called The Hunt for Oscar, was made
in 1994 by Terry Doran.
When a swamp was drained near Black Oak,
Indiana, in July 1950, a huge turtle with a head
as big as a human’s was seen swimming around
a drain leading into the Little Calumet River.
Possible explanation: The Alligator snapping
turtle (Macroclemys temminckii) reportedly
grows to a maximum weight of 400 pounds. It
has a huge head with hooked upper and lower
beaks, prominent dorsal keels, and an extra row
of scutes at the side of the carapace. It lives almost
exclusively in the Mississippi River
drainage areas of Mississippi, Louisiana,
Arkansas, and Missouri. It may occasionally migrate
further afield.
Sources: Indianapolis Star Magazine, January
1, 1950; Indianapolis News, July 15, 1950;
Churubusco.Net: Turtle Days, http://
members.aol.com/iga1/tdays1.htm.
Beast of Exmoor
British Big Catof southwestern England.
Physical description: Large, black cat or dog.
Length, 3 feet–4 feet 6 inches. Shoulder height,
2 feet 6 inches. White markings on the head and
neck. Squat head. Short neck. Powerful, muscular
body. Short legs.
Behavior: Nocturnal. Moves rapidly from
cover to cover. Kills sheep by breaking the neck
at the second vertebra or crushing the skull.
Tracks: Large, doglike prints, 4 inches across.
Smaller tracks may be a female’s.
Distribution: Exmoor, in the counties of Somerset
and Devon, England.
Significant sightings: Attacks on livestock
gained prominence in Devon in the spring of
1983, though scattered reports of a black animal
in the area go back to 1982. Eric Lay, of Drewstone
Farm near South Molton, thought he had
lost at least forty lambs over the previous few
months. Local police called in the Royal
Marines, which held stakeouts in early May and
June 1983 as part of Operation Beastie. They
were able to observe the animal through nightvision
equipment. Reports of both large cats and
dogs were logged. By late June, there were
eighty-six kills, but these dropped off in July.
Two boys, Wayne Adams and Marcus White,
saw the Beast on May 29, 1983, at Willingford
Farm on Exmoor. It was jet black with some
white markings and powerfully built. Though
its head looked like a German shepherd dog’s,
the animal moved like a cat. The same night, a
sheep was killed at Ash Mill.
Trevor Beer saw a black cat measuring 4 feet
6 inches in the summer of 1984 at a cache of
deer carcasses on Exmoor that he had discovered
earlier in the year. It ran swiftly and had powerful
forelegs.
In January 1987, Trevor Beer discovered
nine lynxlike pawprints 3 inches in diameter at
Muddiford, Devon. In August, he took nine
photos from a distance of about 100 yards of a
black cat, 4 feet 6 inches in length, that stalked
and killed a rabbit on Exmoor.
In 1990, Lars Thomas led an expedition (Operation
Exmoor) to investigate sightings. At the
site of a sheep kill, he found a tuft of hair that
was identified as belonging to a puma.
Possible explanations:
(1) Trevor Beer proposed that feral Domestic
dogs (Canis familiaris) were killing livestock,
but large cats of some kind were also in the
neighborhood. He noted that about 20 percent
of the sightings involved a fawn-colored
cat.
(2) Large, feral Domestic cats (Felis silvestris
catus) were suggested at first by Nigel Brierly,
perhaps representing a hybrid strain that has
attained puma-sized proportions.
(3) A black Puma (Puma concolor) was
Brierly’s later conclusion, though melanism
is virtually unknown in this strictly American
species.
(4) An unknown species of indigenous big
cat, suggested by Di Francis.
(5) A Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) explanation
was favored by Frank Turk after lynx hairs
were identified at a sheep kill in 1986.
Lynxes became extinct in Britain during prehistoric
times. In May 2001, a specimen
later nicknamed “Lara” was captured in
Cricklewood, North London, following a reported
big-cat sighting. It was believed to be
BEAST OF EXMOOR 39