NEIL ARNOLD: A STRANGE ENCOUNTER OR HOW TWO TOWNIES PROVED THE NAIVETY OF MANKIND!

The Times – August 2nd 1955

Strange Encounter – Two Puzzled Bicyclists In Sussex

FROM A CORRESPONDENT- It must have been something of a shock. One minute the two London cyclists had lain in their tent on the comrmon convinced that-their shining new machines were safely leaning against the tall Scots pines which an Earl of Sheffield had planted in the year of Waterloo. Next moment they heard movements behind the tangled mass of brambles and bracken which obscured their view of the cycles. Loud grunts sounded from the far side of an oak tree. They soon realized why. As the faint light sent the skylarks soaring above the silver birches, and tawny owls slipped by to their roosts in the pines, the desire to be away early to the coast prompted one of the travellers to wade through the dew on the grass and check the condition of his tyres. He was quickly back in the tent and shaking his companion out of sleep. Half clothed, the pair hastily crept between the avenues of gorse and crouched behind the birches. Their cycles, fortunately, were just as they had left them, leaning against the boles of the pines; but sniffing at the tyres were two strange animals. " You felt," one of the cyclists explained later, “that neither beast had ever seen a bicycle before."

Heads bent low, the two creatures peered closely at the network of spokes in the wheels, gazed cautiously at the pedals and sniffed again at the tyres, Then, turning to face the wind, they clumsily galloped across the common and into a wood.

THE POLICE INFORMED - The day was still young when the telephone bell rang beside our village constable's bed. “Neither the cyclists nor their machines”, explained a voice, “…had sustained any damage. But we thought it best to let you know in case the police are looking for the animals."

" How would you describe the creatures ? " inquired the constable. The Cockney voice was distressingly vague. Both animals were big " like some strange kind of polar bear." Their backs seemed grey and white streaks marked their long faces. They grunted. And they could run with surprising speed.' The cyclists sounded disappointed to learn that no zoo had reported the loss of any bears. The constable has lived in the country all his life. Perhaps that fact explains why, instead of putting through an emergency call to the county police headquarters, he merely slipped on to his bicycle and came round to see me. " As. you're a naturalist," he said, " I thought you'd like to hear about it."

There the incident really ends. But there is a sad postscript. A motorist driving through the night not far from the site where the cyclists pitched their tent recently collided with a powerful animal. Before breakfast our rector discovered the corpse and it was dumped in my garage. Twenty-nine inches long and with a tail of eight inches, the grey bear-like creature smashed our scales at 251b. Two days passed before we buried the animal. Yet such is the interest or the people in this village in our wild life that during that short period the corpse was inspected by the postman, the grocer, our newsagent, two musicians, a professor of medicine, the milkman, a nurse, and 25 schoolboys, not one of whom had ever seen a badger before, though half a dozen selts in the parish are occupied.



"It's a pity those two cyclists couldn't have seen it. too," said our policeman, as we buried the badger at the bottom of my garden.