Where’s the Lion?
By Roselee Papandrea / Times-News
June 13, 2009 – 6:54PM
J.B. Ross isn’t an animal expert.

But the 76-year-old farmer from the Pleasant Grove area knows what he saw on the afternoon of June 4. At the time, he was raking hay at Cal Jeffries Farms on Pleasant Grove School Road when he claims he saw a female lion walking in the middle of the 175-acre farm plush with woods.

“She was walking slow in a straight line,” Ross said.

When the lion got about midfield, it turned her head toward Ross.

“She didn’t turn her body, just her head,” he said. “I was about 200 feet from it, and I decided to take a U-turn and get in my truck.”

The sight of the lion definitely scared Ross a bit, he admitted.

“But I wasn’t too scared when I got that shotgun,” he joked.

Within 30 minutes, Ross saw the lion another two times. At one point, it was drinking from a man-made pond. It was brown and slick with a long tail that was dragging the ground, he said.

“Poor as a snake,” he said. “I could count every rib.”

Shortly after the third sighting, Alamance County animal control officers were searching for the lion, too. Ross didn’t call them. Another farmer, who was raking hay on nearby farm, also claimed he spotted the lion drinking from a pond.

Sgt. Kurt Lankford, the county animal officer who responded, said he received a call mid-afternoon the same day about a lion sighting on another farm on Pleasant Grove Union School Road, not too far from Pleasant Grove Elementary School.

A farmer was mowing hay when he spotted what he described as a “brown lion.”

“Of course, when we got up there, there was nothing there,” Lankford said. “It ran into a more heavily wooded area.”

Animal control checked the area and spoke with a school resource officer from the elementary school so that area could be searched.

“We didn’t find anything,” Lankford said.

Lankford is careful to label the call as “an alleged lion sighting,” he said.

“We have no evidence to prove where and if we do have anything,” he said.

Lankford contacted Jeff Brown, an officer with the N.C. Wildlife Commission.

“Lions are just a little bit out of my day-to-day realm,” Lankford said. “We can do something in an emergency instance but tracking and removal will fall to state wildlife or some zoological factions.”

Lankford also contacted Conservators’ Center Inc. in southern Caswell County. The non-profit center rescues wildlife in need, including lions. He said none of the wildlife that lives at the center is missing.

Cal Jeffries, who owns the farm where Ross was raking, said he thought people in the community should know that at least two people say they spotted a lion in that area.

“I think it’s worth a story just so the local population can know that there was a lion up there by Pleasant Grove school,” Jeffries said.

Animal control has received several calls from concerned residents who live in that area, but none of the callers actually saw a lion. He said there is some second-hand information that someone spotted unusual tracks, but there haven’t been any reports of any livestock attacks or other evidence related to a wild animal looking for food.

“We don’t know what he’s seen,” Lankford said, referring to the farmer who reported the lion. Lankford hasn’t spoken to Ross. “We don’t know if he’s seen a child with a bad haircut. We don’t know because we haven’t seen anything.”

Brown has his doubts.

“We hear stuff like this all the time,” he said. “People say they see lions and black panthers. There have been no signs. There has been no proof or picture or one hit by a car. It’s just something we hear a lot. I’m not sure what the valid proof of this is. I haven’t seen any.”

The odds of wildlife escaping from the Conservators’ Center is minimal, Brown said.

“That place is topnotch,” Brown said. “For something to escape from there would be unlikely and if that happened, they would notify us immediately.”

Brown thinks the farmers saw some other animal. Ross is adamant about what he saw.

“I seen him three times,” he said. “I’d bet my life on it. It was a lion. I never seen a dog like that. I never seen a big cat like that.”

Seems as if there’s been another couple of sightings. This area is roughly 10 miles or so as the crow flies from the property belonging to my employee’s family.

Link to story here: http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/lion-25828-ross-lankford.html#slComments

I didn’t know they moved the big cat preserve from Chatham county. When I heard something about a big cat preserve, I thought of them, first, but then I wondered how a lion would make from Chatham up to Caswell without being seen as there’s a lot of population and I-40 in between.
Thanks for that update. It makes a little more sense now, from the “escapee” standpoint.

I am the original author of the above quoted post at thefiringline.com where I am an active member. I post under the same “nomme de internet” at thehighroad.org and carolinashootersforum.com among others.

The above account is true as I heard it. The fellow who told me about it is a long time employee and a trusted source.

There is a preserve of sorts for lions, tigers and other exotic animals in Caswell county. I believe it is the same preserve that used to be in Chatham County, but am not completely sure about that.

A fellow member of thefiringline now has posted that he heard this reported on WXII, a local TV station. I personally have not seen anything in the local news or in any online news source. In searching for news on this I find myself quoted here. Interesting……:)