'Somewhere on the A39 between Bideford and Bucks Cross, 20/08/08 - 5pm
I don't really like driving, so on holiday I let my wife do all the driving and I get to look around and see if I can spot any interesting animals !!!
We were going pretty slow due to traffic, probably only 10 miles an hour , I was scanning the fields to my left , the field we were level with was empty and quite small only a few hundred yards wide. In the middle of the field was what appeared to be a furry red hump, as I drew level with it I got a pretty good look at it. It was definitely unlike anything I had ever seen roaming about our countryside before.
- Overall length - tip of tail to tip of nose 6 to 7 feet
- Height - 2 to 3 feet at the top of the hump.
- Huge bushy tail.
- Long thin face.
- Colour was red, but not like a fox more like maroon, like the cushion below, but it also had some rusty brown around the shoulders and head.
- The fur was short and course.
- The creature seemed to be digging with really thick front legs.
- My kids saw it as well and got quite excited as it looked so strange!
3 comments:
A maned wolf? But these are ginger like a fox rather than maroon. And what would one be doing roaming about down there?
Maned wolf was the first thing that came to my mind as well - but as well as being roughly the same colour as a red fox, they have very long, thin legs. I can't think of anything else in the size range that has a long face and a bushy tail...
One other thought is that melanistic jaguars can look a "purplish" colour that some might call "maroon" or "burgundy" in certain lights - but while about the right size, a jaguar certainly wouldn't have a bushy tail, and i don't think they'd be very likely to dig.
Colouration and tail sound like red panda, but they are far too small. They do have thick powerful front legs, but i do not know if they dig?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Red_Panda_in_Darjeeling.jpg
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