My Grandfather's Story

“Have I ever told you about the time I was nearly killed by a panther?”

My grandfather always asked me this whenever I came to visit him. He started when I was five and never stopped. I might have been a little kid who believed in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, but I knew for sure my grandfather had never been to a place that had panthers. He had lived in the Midwest his entire life. He wasn’t fooling me. 

That is until I started my studies, and I came across something that triggered alarms in my head. I remembered I was just browsing the Internet, and I forget what I was doing when I came across a story from the late 1970s. This discovery made me realize that my grandfather wasn’t making things up, all this time. 

I contacted him and arranged an interview. I needed this film as proof, straight from the witness’s mouth. By this time, grandfather had gone through a lot in his life, and was now a frail old man, who spent most of his time in a chair. And yet, he agreed to the interview. 

“I was only ten years old when it happened, Marty. Ten years old and none the wiser. I thought I could just play in my backyard without consequence. I was wrong.” 

Grandpa was visibly shaken up as he told me this. I told him it was all right to stop if he felt uncomfortable, but he was determined to get his story out there. 

“I looked out to the yard. Along the lawn was woods. Dense woods, that must have stretched out for a couple of miles. But it never bothered me, living so close to the woods, 'cause I thought there was nothing out there.” 

As he was gazing out across the lawn, he saw something hiding behind the tall grass. It looked like a couple of animals in close proximity. Grandpa could see they were jet-black and furry. 

“I thought it was a couple of kittens that someone left in the field. I realized now how stupid that was. Who would leave a bunch of kittens on someone else’s lawn?” 

Well, he approached the animals, expecting to find just that. Instead, he discovered it wasn’t several animals, but one big one. 

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘oh boy, that is one big cat’ when I saw it.” 

He had only a moment to observe it though. The cat then pounced on top of him. 

“He pinned me down, and it kind of felt like there was a boulder on you… If that boulder had two powerful claws pressing down on your chest.” 

The creature then went for my grandfather’s neck. Instead, it bites off the scarf he was wearing. 

“I remembered earlier that day, debating whether or not to put on the scarf. It wasn’t a winter’s day, but it also wasn’t summer. Dead of fall and the air was getting crisp. And if there’s one thing I hated more than anything, it was a cold neck. So I took the scarf. And it saved my life.” 

For some reason, that caused the monster to step off my grandfather. It was probably so used to biting into necks, that it didn’t know what to do when it came off. So it ran back into the woods, leaving my grandfather with sharp claw marks on his chest. 

“I guess I should be thankful it only scratched me up. I still had to get stitches though. I told my papa what happened, but he didn’t believe me. He told me I found a pussy cat. I tried to explain to him that this thing looked like one of those cats you’d see in zoos, but he didn’t listen to me. ‘There was no way', he told me.” 

And that’s how the story ended, at least for my grandfather. He hadn’t known about the other beast's attacks. 

“Times were different back then. We couldn’t just go on a computer to say hello to everyone cause computers didn’t exist. At least, not like how they are now. No… I only knew about five people back then, and they were other kids like me. And they never said anything about a big, black cat. So I never bothered mentioning it to anyone.” 

Between 1978 and 1979, the Midwest had a string of strange attacks, attributed to ordinary predators, but had the mark of something else. The first death was a horse named Gallows, who was found on the corner of the owner’s property. Its internal organs had been pulled out, and its heart was eaten. As strange mutilation, but the farmer figured it was wild dogs or something of that nature. He only came clean when the papers started reporting the other sightings. 

A few towns across, the second attack occurred. Fifty-One-year-old Margret Delois found her chicken coop completely raided. All the hens had been pulled apart, and their heads were missing. But the most disturbing detail of all was what the predator did to the chicken wire. Delois found the wire in a field a few miles from her house. Whatever it was had run off with it. 

Following the highway, we came across the third victim, a mutt tied to a pole. The owner had always done this to his dogs, for he thought that was the proper way to raise one. When he found his seven-year-old pet, limp and bloody, the following morning, did he realize his methods were ill at most? 

But these have all been animals, so the response was mild. Nothing compared to what would have happened if a human was attacked. Had everyone back then known what happened to my grandfather, there would have been a search. We could have found this thing. 

“I reckon that thing died in the woods. Probably not used to the climate.” 

I then explained to my grandfather that around this time, a local zoo had been under investigation for malpractice, as well as a number of animal cruelty charges. Animals frequently escaped their enclosures, though these animals never made it off the zoo. And even if they did, they were mostly harmless animals, like capuchin monkeys and peacocks. But if there was one enclosure that was more neglected than all the rest, it was the big cat exhibit. 

For Doug H. Anderson, his collection of lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars wasn’t just for the zoo, but a way to show off his wealth and fortune. He would bring guests over to the big cats, as a private event just for them. Yet they lived in tight enclosures and were rarely fed. He’d even let the guests play with the animals. Keep in mind, Anderson was not a zoologist. He wasn’t even trained in any kind of animal background. He was just a wealthy man who decided to run a zoo. 

The incident that placed him in the public spotlight, as well as the authorities, was when one of these cats, a nearly three-hundred-pound tiger named Lily, jumped its enclosure and attacked a zoo hand. Both Lily and the zoo hand died. The zoo hand, from the mauling they received from the tiger, and Lily for a bullet to the back of the head, curtsy of Mr. Anderson himself. 

But it was too late for the zoo. Police were called, and an investigation was launched. Soon the newspapers got hold of the story and ran with it for a couple of days. Anderson was appearing in news programs across the country, as the mad millionaire with a deadly tiger. Soon the zoo was shut down, and Anderson disappeared from the public light. 

But what happened to all his animals? One would think he just sold them to other zoos or private collectors. But would a man who cared so little for his animals bother with such? If it was easier for him to, say, release his animals into the wild, would he? So what if the animals did something? He’d be out of town, and out of everyone’s hair. 

“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.” Said Grandpa. “People in my days didn’t care what we did. We don’t see the world how ya’ll see it. There was something lacking in those days. People did more stuff like that.” 

The house my grandpa lived in when he was younger had been sold and torn down. I wanted to revisit the place where this happened but decided against it. Felt weird asking the new owners if I could take a look at their backyard. And yet, another part of me wanted to, for maybe if I asked, they’d mention something. 

“Oh yeah sure. By the way, did your grandfather have problems with the big, black cat as well?” 

Ultimately, I decided against it. There was no way it was still alive. Grandpa was right, it most likely died when winter came. And even, by some miracle, it did live, it must have moved on from here. I found it strange that the cat was following the highway. Did it know to travel that way? And if it did, how come no one else had seen it? 

In my research, I came across some stories that I’m not sure are true. People claim to see panthers all across the state, but they don’t believe they have escaped zoo animals. They think they’re mountain lions with rare fur conditions, like how some animals turn all white. What’s it called? Albino-something. 

Anyways, it’s like that, but with black instead of white. I’m not too sure about this, for I did some research about cats while preparing for this. Apparently, panthers are not a real species of big cat, but a name given to leopards and jaguars who have that rare black fur condition. But they are the only ones who can pull off this mutation because they have the proper pigments in their fur or something like that. Mountain Lions do not. 

So I don’t know what my grandfather saw all those years ago. Maybe it was a panther. Maybe it was a rare form of Mountain Lion. Maybe it was just a really big house cat. Or maybe my grandfather had got the best of me after all these years and told me a tall tale. I don’t know, but it does change how I perceived childhood stories. Makes me wonder what else was real.