When you’re emptying your dishwasher, watching your big screen TV, or sorting laundry from the dryer…….you think you have all of your ducks in a row…….all in the comfort of your air conditioned home…

Then you get a phone call like this…………

My road-trip friend, Suzanne-Annette had quite the story to relay.

S.A. has a number of horses and cows.  Her property is also very close to the Withlacoochee Forest and River.

Like I’ve said before——-Florida is not all beaches and Mickey Mouse——-there are some really scary things here…………………………………..

Suzanne-Annette was calm…….but her story was an attention getter…………………….

“Something” had taken down, killed and started eating one of her cows.

To be specific…….an eight month old, 300 to 400 pound heifer calf.

We have a lot of coyotes.

Feral dog packs happen from time to time.

But this kill was different…

There were marks along the back of the neck and spine……………and the stomach was the primary feeding area on the carcass.

A single coyote or feral dog probably wouldn’t have been able to take down a calf of that size.

 

A pack would have torn it in all directions.

There didn’t appear to have been a big scuffle on the ground.

To add to the mystery…….where S.A. buried the calf…….the next night “something(s)” partially dug up the poor thing…

I suggested lime powder…….and a deeper hole.

Suzanne-Annette was going to go back out to that pasture (where there are a number of other cows and horses) to see if she could find any tracks.

Everything seemed fine (except, of course, the earlier cow-carnage)……..

One other bit of information that Suzanne-Annette relayed was that the abdominal area, where whatever-it-was fed, wasn’t ragged.

It was concise, purposeful and semi-circular.

I asked her what organs were missing…….she said she wasn’t up to checking…

Fair enough…

We did some computer searching and came up with this information……

***Especially Read The 2nd Paragraph Of “Lion Kill Characteristics”***

We think “it” was most probably a Florida panther…….

They have a 150-200 square mile territory (our place is easily within his territory too).

They’re governmentally protected.

Between the wild hogs and now a local Florida panther——-it makes you think twice about going out at night (or in the day).

Oh wait——-Pascal, I didn’t tell you about my encounter with the wild hogs, did I?……………………..

I need to………………………