BIRD ATTACKS IN FALMOUTH BAY - We've been here before

At the beginning of the year, the good doctor telephoned me, and said that this was going to be a rather special year for those of us who have been watching the quasi-fortean events in southern Cornwall over the past third of a century.

And in a low key sort of way, it has been. Earlier in the year there were a spate of sightings of a strange bipedal mammal in the woods between Mawnan Old Church and Maenporth Beach, and so I was not particularly surprised when I received several notifications of a series of raptor attacks in the Helford passage. As anyone who has ever made a study of such things will know, we have been here before.

Watch this space, because the game is most definitely afoot....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/8158022.stm

DR DAN WITH AN INTERESTING RESOURCE

DAN HOLDSWORTH WRITES:

Jon,
Having read your story about the phantom black dog, I decided to go looking for an online map of geological faults and similar data. I found http://portal.onegeology.org/

Mooching around on this I happened to discover that Mawnan Old Church is sitting slap bang on top of a geological fault. Now, Google Earth has a layer that shows where there have been earthquakes in the past.

There was an earthquake just a little away from Mawnan in July 23, 1966 01:50:04 UTC at a depth of 33.00 km (20.51 mi). So, that fault was active then and is very likely still creeping a bit to this day, and very likely still churning out geomagnetism and the like.

Interesting, yes?

(Oh, and there are geological faults shown near Somerset, but nothing much shown near the northern bit).

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: The Owlman and Others

Oll Lewis has done a very good job (and is continuing to do a very good job) digitising the CFZ Archives. Eventually they will ALL be available on line, and they will be indexed and sorted. Even the 30,000+ pictures in the CFZ picture library will be available for free as low res thumbnails, and for money as high res downloads. But this takes time and effort, but we get there slowly.

In the meantime here is a collection of newspaper stories from the CFZ Archive of Owlman-Related material. There is tons and tons more, but these (which include the hysterically funny "Weirdest Family in the Land" story frtom The Sun in April 1978) will do for starters..


http://www.cfz.org.uk/Archiving/Owlman/Newspaper/

Eat yer heart out Edward Lear

Those of you who have read my book, The Owlman and Others which is set in the woods around Mawnan Old Church in southern Cornwall, will know that there is an ongoing sub-text about Edward Lear. Lear (1812-1888) was a painter, poet, artist, writer and composer of nonsense poetry and limericks. His work is also the subtext of Seven Sunflower Seeds by one of my favourite authors, the late Sir John Verney an author who's glorious prose should be read by every fortean.

I quoted both Verney and Lear in The Owlman and Others and so I suppose that I should not be overly surprised at the latest developments surrounding the new Beast of Falmouth Bay It was seen in a set of woodlands which join on to the woodlands where the subject of my most well known book is said to roost.

These woodlands are already the home of a twisted, scarified owl, and now seem to be the haunt of a sililarly twisted and scarified pussycat. We confidently expect a visit from the pigs, and a pea green boat. Watch this space....

http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/pussy.html

RICHARD FREEMAN: THE FALMOUTH CREATURE; A SAD POSSIBLITY

I don’t like cats, I never have, I’m a dog man through and through. Cats decimate small mammal and bird populations. Around he world they are responsible for a number of extinctions the most famous being the Stephens Island Wren (Xenicus lyalli) that was found only on one small island in New Zealand and wiped out by introduced feral cats in 1895.

I wouldn’t be wantonly cruel to a cat, or indeed any animal, though. Which is why I find what discovered last night very disturbing.

In an answer to my posting on the mystery beast of Falmouth and its possible identity as an aye-aye or a springhare a lady called `Eve` suggested it was something called ‘a twisty cat’. I had not heard of this before so I did some research.

Twisty cats, also known as `squittens` or `kangaroo cats` suffer from a deformity of the radial bones in the front legs. Known as Radial Hypoplasia it causes the front legs to become stunted and almost useless. Sometimes the cat can walk on them in a wobbly fashion but in other cases it hops on its hind legs.

Radial Hypoplasia can occur as a mutaion in nature on rare occations but in the USA there is a sick trend in breeding these unfortunate animals for his specific deformity.

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2008/11/06/twisty-cats-so-adorable-its-retarded/

Every time I think I can’t despise the human race any more, my own species proves me wrong. I sincerely hope this appalling trend is not getting a foothold in the UK.

I hope the Falmouth beast is not a poor deformed cat, but Occam’s Razor says it’s more likely than a springhare or aye-aye.

I’m hoping to contact the eyewitness herself but in the meantime here are some pictures of cats with this sad deformity, bred on purpose for the entertainment of sicko humans.