A woman was left stunned after capturing footage of a suspected dead puma on the side of the road.
Courtney Roberts, 21, was travelling on the A483 on the outskirts of Chester last week when she saw the dead animal lying in the central reservation.
She later shared her footage with experts and was told it was thought to be the body of a puma, otherwise commonly referred to as a ‘mountain lion’ or ‘cougar.’
Experts said the big cat, usually native to the Americas, has been sighted in the wild in Britain since the 1960s and 1970s when they were popular to keep as pets.
Courtney, of Wrexham, said: “You see so many strange-looking animals on the side of the road over here.”
“I had to put my phone on record and point it down to the road, unfortunately, it isn’t as clear as I’d like it to be.”
“Looking at that picture it does look like a bobcat.”
“My partner was just looking and he saw a Scottish wildcat on Google and I think it looks like one of them but …. in person you can see a spotted pattern on its coat.”
She posted the photos on a Facebook group for lost pets, where it was seen by a network of nationwide big cat researchers who then picked up the case.
Owing to the amount of interest in the mystery animal, Courtney decided to return to the location with her partner to try to identify the animal or possibly even recover the body.
But when she went back an hour later, the animal had mysteriously vanished:
She added: “I’ve just gone on to the bypass with my partner and pulled over, and we stopped exactly where I saw the animal, and now there is no animal there. So I think someone has seen my post and gone to take it.”
“There’s no animal there. I’ve literally gone up and down again in my car with my full beams on, but I can’t see any animal there now.”
“So I don’t know what’s happened in the past hour, but I think someone’s seen my post and they’ve taken the animal.”
A recently released documentary about Britain’s mystery big cats called ‘Panthera Britannia Declassified’ has topped the Amazon documentary charts, and claims to have proven once and for all that big cats are living wild in Britain.
Tim Whittard, the show’s producer said: “This wouldn’t be the first time the body of a big cat has been seen road-killed in Britain. This is the fourth report I’m aware of in less than three months, and there are several high profile cases of similar incidents.
After the dead body mysteriously vanished Courtney believes there could even be a conspiracy at work. She added: “”That’s exactly what I thought, if it were a fox they would have left it, it must have been something of interest, it’s very unfortunate that someone beat me to it.”
According to Canadian wildlife expert Jason Kenzie, who has worked extensively with exotic cats, the animal is most likely a juvenile puma. He said: “It looks feline, but I believe it’s too large to be a Scottish wildcat. It could be a Bobcat or Lynx, but really this has the markings of a young cougar.”
Tim Whittard said he agreed with the puma theory. He added: “Honestly, as daft as it might sound, I really do think you’d be far less likely to see a Scottish wildcat in this location than a puma.”
