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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Essex Lion
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Rosalind
Shipmate
# 317
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Posted
Have any shipmates seen it?
Posts: 141 | From: North Beds | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
In my usual sceptical mode, I'm putting this down to a combination of hoax (see here for a precedent) and the silly season.
Of course I could be wrong...
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
The police were advising people who live in the area to stay indoors yesterday. They changed that advice today 'because it's a lovely sunny day'
erk!
Lions don't eat on lovely sunny days?
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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passer
Indigo
# 13329
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Lions don't eat on lovely sunny days?
Well, not Christians. They're out of season in August anyway.
Posts: 1289 | From: Sheffield | Registered: Jan 2008
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shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556
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Posted
No sun here. Disappointing day.
The last lion I saw was when I went to see the Lion King
[ 27. August 2012, 10:10: Message edited by: shamwari ]
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by passer:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Lions don't eat on lovely sunny days?
Well, not Christians. They're out of season in August anyway.
Corralled into camp gatherings?
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Rosalind
Shipmate
# 317
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Posted
As I write, I see the SOF postcard of a lion alongside this screen. Perhaps it explains why the lion got set loose in the first place.
According to news reports, the police have been armed with tranquillisers. It didn't specify who they were for.
Posts: 141 | From: North Beds | Registered: May 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
(From the ITV news site)
"Pub landlord: 'It has been a bit surreal'. Dave Sparks runs the Red Lion pub in Essex, near where a lion was reportedly sighted..."
It's a bank holiday weekend. The lion probably wanted a pub lunch and a glass of something (London Pride?), like anybody else.
It's probably gone to check out the other pubs with Lion in the name in the area.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
They said on the TV news that it may be a huge cat - which sounds amazing if it is. The police etc are still looking for it and still warning people to not get out where it might be.
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by daisymay:
They said on the TV news that it may be a huge cat - which sounds amazing if it is. The police etc are still looking for it and still warning people to not get out where it might be.
A normal cat viewed through binoculars will appear huge.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
BBC news reports the police are taking the sighting seriously because someone got a photo on a camera phone - they showed to an expert (presumably someone working in a relevant discipline at a university or at a zoo) and they said, yes that looks like a lion.
It wouldn't be a total surprise, there have been genuine big cat sightings in the UK dating from just before licensing was brought in. Folk not wanting the hassle released theirs (v bright).
Essex has more than its fair share of very rich not particularly bright people - I could see someone getting one as curiosity and then not securing its paddock properly.
[ETA Have read updated report, they've now said no definitive ID - so probably a hoax then.]
[ 27. August 2012, 13:19: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
We've had stacks of 'big cat' sightings in South Wales, mostly in the Wye and Usk valleys, but many from people on their way home from the pub.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
The Fortean term is ABCs - Anomalous (or Alien) Big Cats. Remember the Surrey puma? Sightings, combined with 'evidence' such as missing/ savaged pets or livestock crop up periodically.
Like other modern folklore, it can be resolved into misinterpreted phenomena, hoax, conflation and archetypal motif, usually all running together.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
I'm pretty convinced that I saw a puma-type-animal near Hay-on-Wye about ten years go. Eight-thirty in the morning; I was sober - can't speak for the puma. But it does seem pretty unlikely that such an animal could be about without the effect on local farm animals making its presence pretty obvious.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
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passer
Indigo
# 13329
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Posted
Looks like the subject of all the excitement is just a puddy-tat! Looks very like my own, but Rufus was here all night, I can assure you Officer.
Posts: 1289 | From: Sheffield | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Does anybody seriously think that looks like a dog? (Other than that zoologist?)
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
I think it looks like a toy.
remmebr this fiasco??
Yes. Yes, I do.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
I think it looks like a toy.
remmebr this fiasco??
Yes. Yes, I do.
![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
Posts: 2138 | From: South, UK | Registered: Aug 2008
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
And they've said it again on the TV that it is a huge cat, which is thought of now by some police-people. They did show us some pictures of lions, but not any of huge cats.
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
I think it was a maine coon. The ears and general shape seem right. Lions do not have pointy ears.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
Qlib - sounds like you saw the Beast of the Beacons! There's a farmer in Clifford swears he's seen it prowling round his house.
Some years ago, my husband was called up to the Sennybridge Ranges, where the army practice their shooting and so forth. The local Wildlife Trust asked him to act as their "resident expert" to check out reports of a black puma like animal there. Allen said that he was shown round by a very down to earth and sensible sergeant, who was convinced that he'd seen it. They couldn't find any traces - but there are plenty of sheep up there for such a Beast to eat (and sometimes they get blown up by the UXBs scattered around the place).
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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tomsk
Shipmate
# 15370
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Posted
A friend of mine from Braintree had a guinea pig go missing, clearly devoured by the desperate Loughton Lion.
Posts: 372 | From: UK | Registered: Dec 2009
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I think it was a maine coon. The ears and general shape seem right. Lions do not have pointy ears.
Or this. It has the sandy coat and pointy ears. The advantage is that this species used to live in Britain. It might not be quite as extinct in the UK as people think.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
The thing being that Maine Coons are kept as pets in this country.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
{whispers}
Aslan is on the move!
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
Thank you for that, Golden Key!!!
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Here in Michigan cougars had been extinct since colonial times, then began appearing in the Upper Peninsula -- apparently migrating from the West in the wake of federal protections. A few years ago there began to be reports of big-cat sightings in the northwestern Lower Peninsula, including one sighting by a presumably trained, non-hysterical National Park Service employee who reported briefly coming face to face with one in the Sleeping Bear Dunes area.
The state Department of Natural Resources has been loathe to confirm any of this -- I remember asking my DNR-officer cousin about cougars in lower Michigan, and his hastily negative response suggested I'd made some sort of horrible faux-pas -- but recently it did confirm DNA evidence of cougar in the Lower Peninsula. (Not sure if this reticence has to do with a desire to be entirely factually correct, or pressure from the state not to frighten tourists, or an attempt to keep farmers and rabid shoot-anything-that-moves hunters from killing off this new population, or a combination of things.)
Which is kind of cool -- even though, as opposed to wolves, which generally avoid humans even if they're hungry, cougars have a reputation of aggressively hunting us.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
cougars have a reputation of aggressively hunting us.
Misplaced reputation. Very few predators "aggressively" hunt humans. Even those that do, most are deviations rather than the norm for the species.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
It may have disappeared for now, but it might just be lion in wait...
... either that or it really has gone off to the pub for lunch. I can see the scene now, as the barman takes the order from a safe distance:
"How would you like your steak?"
"Roar."
(I'll shut up now)
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
LIONS 7 CHRISTIANS 0
Christians in Heaven, lions ill.
I can't remember where that quotation came from, but it seemed appropriate ... ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
We were in Essex earlier this week, and we didn't even see a corpulent cat, let alone a lion.
It's completely beyond me how anyone could mistake the moggy in the picture in the East Anglian Daily Times for a lion, even in Essex.
![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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