BBR Investigator Dr Mac has a particular set of skills that makes him unique, not only for the UK but also globally. He is a tracker and outdoors man and has been tracking and listening to local reports of wildlife in different regions of the world for a number of years and we will be sitting down and recording an interview this month so we can hear about his research. He recently contacted me via email with a case he has heard whilst making enquiries into the possibility of big cats in the upland areas of Northern Ireland where he is now based.
Dr Mac: “I’m a British born Metis Indian (aboriginal) from Canada so tracking and outdoors activity has been a staple for me since I was a kid and to be honest, I can say this is pretty much hardwired too. I do some tracking in the local County Antrim area of Northern Ireland where my kids are being raised and we track and report the local pine marten and other wildlife as a learning exercise for my kids which we post on our little YouTube channel if we get permission.
I work at a university in Belfast so I meet a lot of different people in different fields and I was talking to a lady I know who was involved with animals of sorts. I told her about my little spare-time hobby of tracking and documenting a potential predator (likely a big cat) across the region I live in and so she shared a story of her own which surprised me.
This lady lives in County Down near the Mountains of Mourne close to the border with the Republic of Ireland and she would often drive home late at night without incident. But one night on the Cabra Road near Kilcoo she was driving home around midnight when something ran across the road in front of her car. Her first impression was that she was seeing a pair of very tall hairy legs. She could see them in her headlights. The legs ran half way across the road, hesitated in the car lights and turned to go back before completing its journey across the road and into the fields beyond.
She described the thing as looking like the legs of a certain type of puppet from back in the day and she told me it unnerved her so much she had difficulty sleeping for some time afterwards. The crazy thing was it was just legs, so when I suggested if there were legs it must also have a body too then she became unnerved again and said “then it must be huge about 10-12 feet tall if it had a body too”.
It was the way she opened up to my tracking stories, like she wouldn’t have otherwise but spoke with real emotion and conviction which made me think she was really serious. Now I’ve found some strange stuff here and elsewhere myself and as an academic I’ve got to keep an open mind but this was the sort of thing that made me actually stop and ask myself whether there could be something in this.
With respect,
Dr Mac”
Deborah Hatswell - BBR Investigations 