The Beast of the Woods

A dark night somewhere around the first quarter of the year.

Having walked the mutts around and about the forest we had since devolved into a tug of war over a hefty branch. The mutts have a tendency to grab the very largest piece of tree they can, and then trot around with their trophy clamped between their jaws. Never mind that it's 8 feet long and as thick as your arm... that just means it doesn't break.

The three of us staggered along, tugging this way and that - the branch was long enough that I held it behind me over a shoulder, whilst the base of it trailed to the floor a few feet behind me - both mutts clamped to it.

Dark. So dark that anything in any kind of tree cover is lost entirely. In the sparser areas you can make out shapes.

Struggling along, my ears prick up at the sound of pounding paws breaking through the undergrowth to my right. Ah I think. One of the mutts has become bored chewing on the stick and has made off into the bushes. Wanting to know which one I still had tugging on the branch, I looked back.

Only to see both mutts still tugging.

A split second realisation of - if they are both there, then what's blasting through the undergrowth on my right.

I snapped my head back round - just in time to see a dark silhouette streak across the path in front of me, less than 5 feet away. It moved fast and slunk close to the floor - something big, and something heavy. Far too big for a fox or cat - and too heavy. The wrong shape and size for a deer or a dog - and it moved nothing like them. Lithe and low slung. Like a cat. But much bigger. And heavier.

Within a blink of an eye it had crossed the path and flown into the undergrowth to the left of the path.

The mutts, keen and aware hunters that they are noticed nothing. Their minds were fixed on the branch. Idiots.

Shrugging off the encounter as 'one of those things' ( you get used to the weirdness when you regularly walk at that time of night ) we continued on and thought nothing more of it.

It was only in the week after, browsing the news that I stumbled across a report...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-21628555

... and what I had seen that night clicked. Surely not ? Could be. Was about the right size, shape, movement. But then surely someone would have seen it ? Caught it ? Bumped into it ?

Who knows.