Hill Street Views: Cooley's 'big black panther' and a rather angry bird

It’s only been in recent years that I’ve started to see buzzards in the skies locally. Not that they weren’t there before, it’s just that I hadn’t really known about them or twigged that they were birds of prey. And quite impressive ones at that.

A friend, Eamonn, from Jenkinstown, has had a fascination with them since childhood, he told me. Of course, they’re more readily visible out on the Cooley peninsula, as opposed to where I live in the centre of urban Dundalk.

I started seeing them more often in the last few years soaring overhead while driving along the M1 motorway. They seemed almost suspended in mid-air; wings spread wide, but not feeling the need to flap them to remain aloft. Using the updraft of warm air from the ground to glide elegantly across great expanses of land, keenly watching for prey.

But, according to several reports coming in from Eamonn’s neck of the woods out on the peninsula last week, buzzards, or perhaps just one rogue bird, had rather unfortunately made some human beings a target for some particularly unsavoury air to ground attacks.

And it seems to be runners that this buzzard has a problem with – go figure. According to Ravensdale Community Alert a “nesting buzzard attacked a local runner… near the top of the Gyles Quay road… aggressively swooping from behind, causing a number of injuries and drawing blood from this person’s head and back.” That description makes it sound like a truly terrifying encounter, in fairness. But it wasn’t an isolated incident either - “a different local person out walking was also attacked in the last few days too,” added the post on the community group’s Facebook page last Wednesday.

A local armchair ornithology expert responded to the post in a valiant effort to try and explain what was going on and why the buzzard was trying to take lumps out of runners, writing: “ Some buzzards are more aggressive at the nest site. Runners seem to be at higher risk of being attacked, most likely because their higher approach speed is seen as a greater threat to the birds. This nest is later than normal. If possible, it’s best to avoid the area over the next three weeks or so, by which time the chicks should have fledged.” Helpful advice indeed.

But the Cooley area is no stranger to moments when weird nature strikes back, or at least unexpectedly rears its head. A trip through the Democrat archives this week brought up a delightfully bonkers front-page story from May 15th, 2004.

Throughout that particular week stories of a mysterious black panther on the loose across the northeast had captured the imagination. From Clones to Cooley, people in rural areas were on their guard as unsubstantiated stories of a large black cat roaming fields picked up traction. So much so that one unverified woman from Cooley rang into RTE’s Gerry Ryan Show to tell the nation what she had witnessed.

The Democrat report states: “The woman was walking in the Cooley mountains with her family when she spotted a curious shape emerge from the edge of the forest.” With our appetites whetted, the next paragraph, unfortunately, fails to bring the scares, it simply continues: “However no further information could be found and even senior RTE researchers failed to take the women’s details.” She did go on the record to tell Gerry and Ireland that “it was definitely a big black panther” though.

In fact, the mysterious ‘Cooley woman’ proved more intriguing than the big cat story, with the Democrat report going on to say that the woman’s name could have been ‘Margo’ and the number she rang RTE on was an ‘046’ number, which would suggest the Kells area of County Meath – not exactly a neighbouring parish of Cooley.

The article reports on other big cat sightings in Monaghan - upping the creepy element by quoting a veterinary superintendent named Des Patton who had examined the mutilated carcass of a young calf on a Clones farm just days before hand. “We have never witnessed an animal being mauled in such a manner. It appears the calf was killed by some kind of creature with very sharp claws,” he presumably added with a theatrical glint in his eye.

The sense of both fear, excitement and intrigue about the whole thing even reached as far as the Department of Agriculture, with an officer named Alan Walsh, stating that “it is hard to figure this out as no one saw the calves being attacked. The panther has allegedly travelled from the Cooley mountains to Cavan,” he then adds - entirely straight-faced we must assume - but not unreasonably, “that is quite a distance for the animal to travel and is unlikely.”

In what I hope and pray was a nod and wink to that Father Ted episode about the hoax ‘Beast’ created by Giant Reed and Hud Hastings to rig the King of the Sheep competition, local sergeant Joe Flynn, wonderfully concludes the Democrat report with this chilling warning: “Mind your children and don’t approach the beast if you spot it.”

These types of urban legends are legion across the centuries and territories of the world – Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster being the two most famous, but it’s remarkable how they still capture the imagination today and while the stories are nearly always red herrings, it doesn’t take much for reports to grow arms and legs, or as Fr Dougal feverishly exaggerates in that Father Ted episode, when describing the ‘Beast’: “It has no mouth, but instead has four arses”.

We simply want to believe there’s unexplained ‘things’ lurking outside our modern, safe, sealed-off, digital lives. It makes life that bit more interesting and unexpected when something out of the blue is spotted – also scary and potentially dangerous, let’s not forget.

Regardless, take care if you’re out running near Gyles Quay this week. Look to the skies!