While I’m still on holiday in the beautiful area of Devon, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Beast of Exmoor.
The “beast” is said to roam the fields and moors of Devon and Somerset, and is claimed to be a phantom cat. They are also described as Alien Big Cats, which means they are alien to their surrounding environment and not as I thought from space.
There have been many alleged sightings up and down the country of big cats just chilling in farmers fields or sauntering over the moors. Whether these reports are true or are made by people who should have gone to specsavers remains dubious.
Long before the days of Joe Exotic, that bitch Carol Baskin and Tippi Hedren (star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds), people in the UK had a penchant for owning big cats. If you were wandering down Carnaby street in the 60’s and 70’s, it wouldn’t be that surprising to see a leopard or a cheetah on lead. I really hope these pretentious owners carried them little black dog poo bags but I think you can already gage the pomposity of the kind of person that thinks Lambeth is a better environment than the savannah of Africa for these animals!
So, this begs the question WTF? And it’s a very good question cos what the fuck people! I’ll be honest, I’m torn on whether zoos should exist. On the one hand who knows how long we have David Attenborough for and when he goes zoo’s may be the only place to see wild animals outside of his BBC documentaries, but animals should live free and a 40 foot by 40 foot cage is no life for them and some of these animals can’t even appeal their sentence. I’m also aware of the conservation zoo’s do and some of these animals couldn’t be allowed to live in the wild due to pricks wanting some kind of trophy or selfie in front of a dead animal, so there’s that but there are some “zoos” that operate in the grey area of the law (see Joe Exotic and that bitch Carol Baskin!).
And this takes us back to how and why there were big cats in the UK anyways, THERE WERE NO LAWS AGAINST IT! We left it for people to use their best jugdement about the health and upbringing of a wild fucking animal; never mind an animal that been domesticated for centuries or even decades, an animal that was a pure alpha predator and king in it’s own environment; and some prick from Mayfair thought “Want that one!”. You didn’t need a license, knowledge of said animal or any special training, just a lead or even a piece of string so it didn’t, you know, maul everyones faces off when you took it on a walk!
The government introduced the Dangerous Wild Animals Act in 1976, probably because of all the maulings, and now you would need a licence and improve the facilities (your back garden I can only assume) that the animals were cared for in, failing that you would have to give up your “pet” to a zoo or authorised keeper or have the pet put down. HOLD THE F-ING PHONE, cos your a dick the animal has to be killed, fuck you Tory government!
This was all well and good and many animals were handed over to zoos and appropriate keepers, but there was a loophole and it wasn’t illegal to set a wild animal free in the UK countryside until 1981! For five, I’ll repeat that louder for the cheap seats, FIVE years assholes were just driving into the country and throwing their big cats out of their Land Rover windows onto the moors. This is how we end up in the situation of Alien Big Cats.
So, onto the “Beast”. As you may have guessed the sightings were first reported in the late 70’s but became major news in 1983 when a South Molton farmer claimed that over 100 of their sheep had had their throats ripped out over a three month period.
In response to this and more reports of livestock deaths, the Royal Marines were tasked with finding the beast. Typical government response, they’d fucked up so send in the army to clean up their mess! Although there was no conclusive evidence found, some Marines claimed to spy the beast through night vision equipment but there were no shots fired as their sniper bullets could have passed through the beast and done damage to livestock. Is there a phase “trying to swat a fly with an A-bomb, cos this situation needs it!
It is interesting to note that the Marines commanding officer was quoted as saying that he thought the beast acted with high, almost human-like intelligence and “always moved with surrounding cover amongst hedges and woods”. Whether this added to the rumour that the beast was some kind of cryptid or maybe a real “alien” big cat, we can only speculate, but the government has concluded that the beast is either a hoax or misidentification of local predators.
The main takeaways from this article should be that wild animals belong in the wild and humans should just leave them to it unless their face is being mauled off, we need to preserve David Attenborough with all of medical science and Carol Baskin is a bitch!
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_Exmoor
http://www.ukbigcats.co.uk/history.php
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/beast-exmoor-what-you-need-736331
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