Great excitement here in Norfolk over the whereabouts and – a fortiori – the existence of what local naturalists are presumably calling the North Walsham Panther. It all started when the local paper printed a picture of a tree with its bark devastated by a set of outsize claw marks, and the testimony of an eyewitness who claimed to have seen a giant-sized cat "bigger than a husky dog" using it as a scratching-post. Next morning the BBC Radio Norfolk breakfast show was aflame with the excited recollections of listeners from the North Walsham-to-Edlington quadrant of the north-east Norfolk coast. One caller, who had seen the animal twice, maintained that it was 5ft long. There was a feeling that it might be making its way to Thetford Forest, in search of proper cover (given that the forest is a good 40 miles to the south-west this would require a feline satnav device, but never mind). As I write this, dozens of outraged farmers are no doubt filing details of mauled sheep to Defra.
The curious thing about this discovery is how neatly it chimes with four or five centuries' worth of local folklore. Norfolk and Suffolk may not have a mythological black cat, but they certainly have a dog – "Black Shuck", who turned up in Bungay church during a thunderstorm in 1577, "an horrible shaped thing", according to the chronicler. Picking out two men from among the congregation, the creature "wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant cleane backward, insomuch that even at a moment where they kneeled they strangely dyed". Shuck, or versions of him, has prowled the Norfolk coastline ever since (cf rock band The Darkness's epic "Black Shuck"). To return to the modern age, remote, rural counties have a habit of retaining mini eco-systems capable of sustaining outlandish fauna, even in an age of motorways and Barratt homes. In this context, the thought that, deep in some lonely copse out on the Bacton Road, the North Walsham Panther is gearing up for a summer of sheep-slaughter and media frenzy is a small blow for freedom.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dj-taylor-lets-speak-plainly-1667630.html
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