Predator !!
He's down on the farm ... with a few days to kill.
WARNING : this page is TOTALLY GROSS.
If you don't have a strong stomach, better stop reading NOW.
Melbourne Cup Day Long Weekend : November 5-7, 2000.
We travel to central-west Victoria
to look into more reports of big cats and their depredations ...
My thanks to Wally D. for letting me use some of his footage.
Our critter is an ambush predator. If there's cover about, he prefers to drag his victim into it and finish his meal there. In this set of pics we see the beast's manner of concealment and its preferred dining technique. It usually eats its victims entrails and midsection, often gnawing it completely in half. It'll eat some of the lean meat off the hind legs and haunches but usually leaves most : it's the gizzards it seems to regard as the main item.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The critter doesn't tear great chunks of flesh off its victim. It slices its dinner open, peels back the skin, then nibbles its way along. Even small bones remain undamaged. When it's eaten skeletal meat on the outside, it'll snip the ribs off, one by one, near the spinal column. Then it'll eat the viscera. Legs it snips off and tosses to one side. Sometimes, as in the second pic, one can make out the imprint of the critter's "hand" in a sheep's wool : VERY sharp, pointy claws and (maybe?) five digits. The claw impressions are similar to the wounds inflicted on those cattle (3rd pic) in South Australia. The print and claw impressions in the soil again show pointed claws with a round cross section, closely similar to ones found in the Panther Ranges and from Emmaville, NSW.
 |
 |
 |
 |
As I said, the critter usually, though not always, starts
eating his victim from the rear end first. It slices off the hind legs
if they're in the way, so as to get at the entrails. The legs are neatly
sheared off, with no crushing of the bones. Actually - and this is utterly
gruesome - sometimes the beast doesn't wait to kill his victim outright
but instead commences to eat it alive. My informant tells me that sheep
have been found still alive with their hindquarters eaten away. My informant,
in this instance, is of the opinion that the beast uses its teeth not to
kill but merely to hold the prey while its claws are used to cut deep,
to disembowel and kill. He believes this because cattle, when attacked,
generally show no bite marks but only deep slashes.
Return to Top
The pictures below are of interest because the close up shows the critter's bite where it's seized the sheep's leg. Judging by the teeth marks, it appears to be equipped with VERY large upper and lower incisors. They look as if they're spaced close together, like a rodent's. Other bite marks, I'm told, show canine type punctures, further apart and of the sort a big cat, such as a panther or puma, would leave. Could we be dealing with two different sorts of animal?
 |
 |
Like it does with smaller animals such as koalas, as we saw in the Panther Ranges, the critter will systematically "peel" its victim, delicately nibbling flesh away as it goes and rolling the skin back so as to avoid getting a mouth full of wool or fur. This leaves the vertebrae and ribs exposed. To get to the brain it nips off the back of the skull and inserts its snout into the cavity, then just slurps out the contents. Contemplating what's involved nearly makes you puke.
 |
 |
Say, who remembers the Predator films? Predator and Predator 2? The first one starred the muscle bound Arnie Schwarzenegger and Predator 2 starred a guy named Danny Glover. Both movies were revoltingly full of gratuitous violence, blood and guts. If you recall, the Predator was an alien monster who hunted humans for sport. He collected trophies in the form of skulls and vertebral columns which he manually ripped out of his still living victims.
That's what our critter does. What we see here is a peeled sheep. Only the skin and subcutaneous fat plus a couple of legs remain. A little way off is the owner's entire vertebral column, minus the ribs and with a bit of pelvis still attached. The sheep's head is nowhere to be seen. Crikey! Seems like we have a real life Predator on the loose around these parts?
 |
 |
We
spend an afternoon using the Vocaliser to entice our critter out from cover.
No luck. I experiment with the gizmo on some farm animals - works well.
See the Vocaliser page. So we decide to head into the scrub to try
and track one of these beasts on foot. You've got to watch your step around
here - lots of old mine shafts. They date from the Gold Rush era in the
1850's and, even though they're about 150 years old and mostly collapsed
and filled, some of them are still pretty deep. Wouldn't want to go roaming
around here in the dark.
They're a death trap for animals that can't climb out - like this goat. Or did a cat drag it down there? No way am I climbing down to look for teeth marks. The cats are said to take shelter in mine shafts, though.
Return to Top
We set the Vocaliser going and wait. There's movement in the scrub. Something black. The cat? Maybe .... We leave the car and go stalking it on foot. We're close. We find some tracks - cat tracks, I'd say. Too big for a domestic feral, yet smaller than some I've been told about. A youngster maybe? Is big mama nearby? They're fresh - they pass by the tyre track we left yesterday in the mud when we passed thru on a first reconnoitre. They have big toe pads, all more or less in a row, not like a dog's, and a smaller plantar pad.
 |
 |
 |
We follow on and come upon two sets - the clawed feline set, with the AUD2.00 coin next to them, and some 'roo tracks. Was a cat giving chase after a 'roo? We look about but no sign of death and mutilation. The 'roo must've got lucky - or this was just a small cat, easy to outrun?
 |
 |
 |
The afternoon wears on. I'm NOT staying out here after dark, let me tell you!
Wally was kind enough to break out some of his plaster
casts. As usual I messed up by forgetting to put down a scale object :
but you can judge the size from the suspension folder at the upper right
corner. And from the pattern on the table cloth, I guess.
Return to Top
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
One last thing. The farmers round the district have had lots of trouble from these beasts, whatever they are. We're talking significant stock losses here. There are clippings from regional news papers going back decades, whole albums full of'em. There was even a reference to "large scale panther hunts" that used to be a feature of country life in these parts in the 19th century. Early on in this saga it was jeeringly suggested to me that the 'cat story' is a kind of localised quasi-superstitious or religious thing, confined to a few hillbilly farmers out in the back blocks.
Nothing could be further off the mark.
According to one newspaper clipping I was shown, from the Maryborough Advocate/Advertiser(?) approx 1989, the matter was mentioned in the Victorian State Parliament. Apparently the Member for the rural seat around Maryborough, Tom Austin, Liberal Party, put a question to the then State Premier, Mrs Joan Kirner, Labour Party, asking what the Government was doing about the large scale stock losses caused by these "unknown carnivores" in central and western Victoria.
Can you get more public than that? And can this tale get any more bizarre than it already is???
After
this trip I had to go up to Canberra, Australia's national capital, as part of my school curriculum. But first we called in at Parkes in NSW to see "The Dish"- ie the real one, the Parkes Radio Telescope. If you haven't seen the film, check it out. It's a great little movie. When we get back we'll return either here or to the Grampians. And we should have the auto-camera with us. We're also thinking of a trip to the Flinders Ranges in January. Better keep watching?
