urban myths

[superfurryandy]

SFA wrote a song about the mysterious chupacabra...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupacabra

[Tiffany]

There could be some truth in your last sentence, Jan.
Friends of ours have seen, only once though, a large tawny coloured cat, early morning around the Sparkwell area. But, they haven't told anyone except me & OH.

[Jan Van Quirm]

They have an excellent collection of big cats in the Sparkwell park and I think they mostly have wide moats in their compounds now so that's likely fixed the illicit off-pen trysting...

I lived in Kent before returning to Devon/Cornwall borders and we used to go to Howletts Wildlife Park near Canterbury (now run by Damien Aspinall carrying on his father's great work) and they had 2 keepers killed by a tiger (separately). The first time it happened they put it down to the keeper forgetting to close a gate as the compound was supposed to be empty of tigers for cleaning. The second time if happened it was unfortunately whilst the park was open and visitors saw the same tigress jump this massive fence into the supposedly tiger-free pen and kill the other poor chap.

This fence was really high (almost 20 feet I think) but it was a straight run and tigress was able to leap about 2/3rds up it and then haul itself up the rest with judicious use of claws and pads. John Aspinall shot the animal himself I think and they now have overhangs on all their very sturdy fencing so it couldn't happen again. Moral of story I suppose is never, never underestimate such powerful animals however 'tame' or used to people they may be - tigers are massively fit and strong creatures and although pumas are much smaller they're still really agile and athletic and have strong hunting instincts of course.

[chris.ph]

my great uncle was a zookeeper at whipsnade zoo and he looked after the wolves. one actually managed to escape , when they tracked it down it was in my uncles back garden where they shot it my uncle was on his way home at the time and when he found out that they had shot the wolf he battered the living s@@@ out of the marksman and had to be dragged off him , he was yelling "that effing wolf has travelled 5 miles to find me and you effing shot it in my garden" he was devastated and gave the job up shortly afterwards. he used to go into the compound when the wolves where running free and was friends with all of them
no moral to this story and its true .

[Tina a.k.a.SusanSto.Helit]

Oh my that is so sad I think he was completely correct. I have a hard time understanding the mentality of killing something just because it went outside of the boundaries. He didn't kill anyone so it is hard to believe they just shot it out of hand.

[Conspiracy Theory]

There could be some truth in your last sentence, Jan.
Friends of ours have seen, only once though, a large tawny coloured cat, early morning around the Sparkwell area. But, they haven't told anyone except me & OH.

Her name's Pandora. She likes shrimp and being scratched under the chin. She doesn't like to be picked up, and tickle her tummy at your own risk!

Escaped about 8 years ago, hasn't been all that inclined to go back to the 'domestic life'.

[kakaze]

My favorite urban myth is the miracle diet pill:

A woman who wants to lose some weight reads an add in a newspaper about a new "wonder pill" that makes you lose weight.

You only need to take one pill and it will continue working for weeks.

You can eat as much as you want of whatever you want and you'll still lose weight.

So the woman orders the pill and a bottle with a single pill in it arrives.

Sure enough, a few days after she took the pill she notices that she's starting to lose weight. Her appetite has not diminished and she continues to eat as she did before, but the weight still goes down.

In fact, she feels hungry all the time and eats more than she did before, and she still loses weight.

At some point she begins to get worried because she's always hungry and her weight is going below where she wanted it to stop, so she visits a doctor.

An x-ray shows that she has a tapeworm in her intestinal tract (the pill had a tapeworm larvae in it) and has to receive treatment to remove the parasite.

From what I've heard there's no evidence of tapeworms being hidden in diet pills, but jockeys used to use them to keep their weight down.

[Tiffany]

There could be some truth in your last sentence, Jan.
Friends of ours have seen, only once though, a large tawny coloured cat, early morning around the Sparkwell area. But, they haven't told anyone except me & OH.

Her name's Pandora. She likes shrimp and being scratched under the chin. She doesn't like to be picked up, and tickle her tummy at your own risk!

Escaped about 8 years ago, hasn't been all that inclined to go back to the 'domestic life'.

Glad you've made friends with her. Jan.
Seriously though, there must be some truth in the tales/sightings.