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Big-cat accounts continue
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Published: May 17, 2009
Last Sunday's column brought out another sighting of the large cat that has been seen recently in northern Iredell County.
In case you missed it, let me bring you up to speed. I put recent cat creature sightings into a historical context, mentioning that sightings of some kind of large cat-like varmint had been reported in parts of Iredell and surrounding counties for more than 100 years, and that people used to call the animal "the santer" and later, "the wampus."
I mentioned some of the better sightings of the beast and brought the story up to January and February 1972.
However, there have been other, more recent sightings.
The Record & Landmark in May 21, 2004, reported on mysterious tracks in an article titled, "Cougar Could Be Prowling in Catawba." Catawba County is our neighboring county to the west.
The article quoted Catawba County Animal Control Officer Steve Boyd, who, upon examining tracks found at Glenda and Keith Clark's residence near Newton, said that the tracks he saw were not made by a bear, but "may be the paw prints of a large cat and her cubs."
Boyd said the tracks "resemble those of a mountain lion or bobcat."
"The toes on the paw print ruled out the possibility that it is a bear," Boyd said. "Bear tracks are generally five-toed, where other animals, including felines and canines, leave four-toed tracks," he said.
The article, with a photo of a paw print, also quoted Charlie Herman, who lived next to Herman's Fish Lake. Herman runs the lake and has dogs.
Recently, the article read, his dogs that are usually quiet at night had been acting differently. "They very seldom bark, but Tuesday night they were raisin' hell ... undoubtedly whatever it is, was here."
Fresh four-toed tracks were found in the mud near the lake.
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I received an e-mail last Sunday from Lewis Honeycutt, 76, who lives in Hamptonville. Honeycutt believes that a big cat of the cougar or mountain lion-type is no myth and that one resides in, or at least occasionally visits, northern Iredell.
Said Honeycutt, "The cat that Jim McNally wrote about is real; it is a gray mountain lion. I live in northern Iredell on Hunting Creek and have since about 1953, and have seen these animals six or seven times, mostly at a distance.
"The last time I saw one was about the year 2000. It crossed my driveway.
"The best sighting I had was in the spring of 1963, on what is now Sawmill Road," he continued. "I was working in Winston-Salem and on my way home I drove my pickup through the country from Dash Road onto Sawmill Road south. I saw this animal come up to the bank in the road which was about four or five feet high. I was about 250 feet (away) when I first saw it, so I slowed down and it just stood at the edge of the bank.
"Well, I just stopped about 50 feet from it. It was a dark grey or light black female cat exactly like Jim McNally described, with a long tail and a large jaw like a quarter horse. It was a female as I could see her teats; it looked like she had babies.
"I sat there for about 10 or 15 minutes looking at the cat and her looking at me then she jumped off the bank into the road and came toward me, then turned down a little side road and went down it.
"I had to see where she went so I went down the little road which went to the back of the Shirley Knight farm. When I got to the end of the road, someone had dumped a dead cow there and she was feeding on it.
"I pulled up and stopped about 50 feet from her; she turned toward me and let out a big squall and run off down through the woods and I was a little uneasy. I turned around and got out of there. Her howl made my hair raise up.
"I was curious about what kind of cat it was and talked to several different people about it. The wildlife people said it was a grey mountain lion — they are brown, gray and black and other colors," Honeycutt said.
Randy Edwards, who lives on the Catawba County side of Sherrills Ford, is a believer, too. Randy states that his wife, Beverly, and son, Chase, saw a large cat or cougar, brown in color, in October 2008 near their home.
"Beverly, who was looking downhill at the animal, said it was around four to five feet tall and had a long tail two or three feet long. This was behind our house in the Sherrills Ford community near Lake Norman," he said.
Edwards says he has spoken with hunters who have made similar sightings.
Cecil and Amy Marlowe, and Amy's father, Kenneth Brucke, all of whom live near Linney's Mill Road in northern Iredell, would agree with Edwards and Honeycutt.
Brucke is 58. He said that it was about two years ago, in the fall of 2007, that he saw some kind of large cat.
"It was about four feet long and had a tail almost three feet long, that is, the tail was almost as long as its body and it had kind of a slope to its back. It came out of some weeds near a dirt road and then there was a smaller cat that followed it."
Brucke said he observed the creatures with what he called "good binoculars."
"This wasn't any house cat; it was way too big," he said.
Amy Marlowe, Brucke's daughter, and her husband and children live nearby. She said that it was this past Easter that she and her husband, Cecil, made an acquaintance with the cat.
"We began hearing it at night. One night it started screaming at about 8:30 in the evening. It sounded like it was saying, 'Wow!' over and over again.
"My dog was scared and was barking, and most of the dogs in the neighborhood were barking and going crazy. My dog will chase foxes and other animals, but that night it wouldn't get off the porch," she said.
"We heard it again one night at about 11:30. Cecil got a flashlight and his shotgun and decided to see if he could find out what was making these howls. He went into the brush, but could not see it, although he could plainly hear it going through the underbrush until it crossed Linney's Mill Road and ran off into the woods.
"I Googled on my computer to "Big Cat Sounds" and listened for several hours until I found one that sounded like the howls we had been hearing.
"When Cecil came in and listened to it and agreed that that was what we had been hearing and asked what animal it was. It was the sound of a mountain lion or puma.
"Our two children want to go play in the woods, but I won't let them. I'm afraid that big cat will be over there.
"We have definitely been hearing something big!"
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If you want to hear what Amy Marlowe says is the animal she heard, go to YouTube and type in: "Mountain lion photos with female lion screaming."
Amy swears that it sounds exactly like this.
O.C. Stonestreet is a retired Iredell County history teacher and works in the newsroom at the R&L. He can be reached at ostonestreet@statesville.com.
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