Existence of various species of animals, or fossil animals known, and theorized to be what is being seen by eyewitnesses of cryptids doesn’t make the uncaught, unproven objects of observation any less a cryptid.

I’m grew up and now reside in one of the most densely populated parts of Alabama, Birmingham, but Clanton is not very far away. I have been there quite a few times and have heard about the BF reports there and have been interested for quite some time. I really wish that cast print was still around to see.

There have been cat sightings/reports in my area though for as long as I can remember. I can remember my grandfather, dad, uncles and other relatives telling the stories of the “black panthers”. I remember hearing about those stories but can’t really recall any specifics. But there was one event that took place at my grandparents home that I will never forget, and it was thought, by all those who witnessed the carnage, that the predator that was responsible was a cougar, even though they aren’t supposedly native to the area. When I was maybe 12 or 13 years old I stayed at my grandparents house during the summers. The lived in a small community on the outskirts of Birmingham. The area they lived in was heavily wooded with a good sized creek maybe 100 yards from the house. But right behind the house my grandparents had a barn, and attached to the barn were several cages filled with rabbits and a large area that was fenced (chickenwire) that contained maybe a dozen or so chickens. During that summer I took care of the rabbits and chickens when I wasn’t fishing at the creek. One Saturday morning that summer my parents got a call from my grandfather very early, and we loaded up in the car and drove the 3 or 4 miles to my grandparents house. When we got there my grandfather led us all to the bac of the house near the barn. When we reached the barn what we saw was sickening and very hard to stomach. The rabbit cages had been ripped to shreds and all the rabbits killed. There were several baby rabbits that had just been born within the last couple weeks and the babies, as well as the adult rabbits, all lay strewn about the ground near the demolished cages dead. They weren’t only dead but they were mangled, like they were only half eaten. The chickens all suffered the same fate. I took care of the animals at the time, so I knew how many animals we supposed to have been present. And the strange thing was, they were pretty much all accounted for, but all were dead and basically ripped to shreds. Entrails and blood were scattered everywhere, it was like a massacre. It’s hard to even imagine what we all saw that day, it was almost beyond belief.

The rabbit cages were made from wood and chickenwire, and so was the chicken enclosure, and chickenwire obviously isn’t a very strong material and couldn’t really even discourage a determined predator. But the part that still bothers me, is that none of the animals were eaten. Looking back on the event now, which happened around 20 years ago, I can distinctly recall that the fact that none of the animals appeared to have been eaten was very strange to everyone. The few animals (rabbits) that weren’t found mangled near the cages were later found alive. We had found just a few of the baby rabbits under the barn still alive, but all the others just seemed to have been ripped apart just for fun, sport, or just for the hell of it. The chickenwire was cut, it was like it was ripped with claws.

There are bobcats in the area, I have seen many in the area myself around the creek when fishing. I’ve even quickly packed my gear and ran back to my grandparents house a few times after hearing the roar of a bobcat from the woods on the opposite side of the creek I was fishing on. But all the bobcats that I saw were fairly small, and I kinda question the ability of one of those small bobcats to cause the destruction to the cages that had occurred. I’m not ruling that out, they may be much stronger that I would tend to think, but I do have a hard time believing a bobcat, or any other large cat, would kill all those rabbits and chickens without consuming any of them. Like I said, they didn’t appear to be eaten, just ripped to shreds, and killed needlessly. It was obvious that some kind of animal did the killing, but my question is why? My grandfather, dad, all the men of the family claim that it was one of the “mystery cougars”, and that the destruction was too severe, too powerful, to have been caused by a bobcat. I just don’t understand why any cat would have massacred all those animals, if not for food……