The black beast is back!
Sighting...Lora Cannon whose daughter Sarah Burdett (15) saw the black cat from her bedroom window walking in the fields at Foxton. (Picture: Andrew Carpenter/001392-76)
A LARGE black panther-like creature was spotted running across a field at Foxton in the latest sighting of the infamous ‘black beast’.
Schoolgirl Sarah Burdett had a shock when she saw the beast from her bedroom as it moved from the cover of a hedge off North Lane in the village.
She rushed to the field with her dad’s partner Lora Cannon, but the large cat was no longer anywhere to be seen.
However the pair found what they believed were its prints and droppings, which they photographed as evidence.
The incident is the latest in a series of sightings of ‘black beasts’ stalking the Harborough countryside which go back as far as the 1990s.
Sarah is from Worcestershire but was staying with her father Andrew and Lora at their home in Main Street, Foxton, over the Christmas period. She made the sighting on New Year’s Day.
Sarah told the Mail: “It was about 8.30am. I was looking out my window and a few fields back I saw what I thought was a labrador running across the field. But then I noticed its ears were pointed upwards and its tail was curled. It was massive compared to a labrador. It was much longer and it was running fast.
“We went to the field to see if we could see anything. We had a walk around and found tracks and faeces.”
Researching on the internet later, Sarah said she was confident she had seen a black jaguar or leopard.
She reported her sighting to the Big Cats in Britain group, of which Nigel Spencer, of Oakham, is the representative for the Harborough area.
Mr Spencer
said there had been a number of sightings of a large cat in the Foxton area since the 1990s.
He added: “Reports all around Foxton and the canal have been common since we first started investigations in the 90s, but whether this is the same animal or offspring I wouldn’t like to say. Fifteen years is the normal lifespan in captivity.”
There have been several black cat sightings reported in the Mail since 1996.
These include sightings at Arthingworth, Maidwell, Kibworth, East Farndon and in Harborough.
The most recent was near Harborough Golf Club in January 2010, when a family saw a creature run out in front of their car on the A508 Northampton Road.
Sightings across the country are usually put down to pet leopard, puma or panthers which have been brought into the country illegally before being released by their owners.
Lora said: “We’ve only been here since May and this is the first I’ve ever heard about something like this. We weren’t going to bother reporting it until we found the tracks. I certainly won’t be going out without my camera again.”
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Weather for Harborough
Thursday 23 February 2012
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Temperature: 9 C to 15 C
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Wind direction: South west
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