Mystery fish

A teenager on a summer evening stroll found a real fish out of water on the banks of the River Crane this week.
Isleworth residents Imogen Doole, 16, (pictured holding the fish) and her father, Steve, discovered the huge fish lying dead on the bed of the River Crane near the junction of St Margaret's Road and Railshead Road.
Mr Doole said the sighting of such a large fish is unusual for the River Thames tributary.
He is now appealing to anglers to identify the species and to have a guess as to why it may have swam up the small canal.
He said: "It seemed to be about 80cm long and I'll guess that it weighs much more than five kilos.
"Perhaps the fish became disoriented or lost once it found itself in the shallow water with the tide falling, or it couldn't get out.
"Maybe the man-made concrete channel had something to do with it."

From THIS IS LOCAL LONDON 27/8/07

Monkey escapes London Zoo (July 2006)

Visitors to Regent's Park witnessed some disgraceful monkey business today as a primate from London Zoo swung into action and made her Great Escape.
Betty, a 10-year-old squirrel monkey is still on the loose after she spotted her opportunity for freedom when staff left a branch of a tree next to her enclosure growing too long.Today crowds watched the monkey running through the trees as staff waited for the moment to tempt her back home.It also emerged that the cheeky monkey may have been plotting the breakout for some time.
A spokesperson said: "The monkeys have really been hurling themselves from tree to tree and can travel quite a long way." David Field, London Zoo's Zoological director said: "She's certainly made a monkey out of us! She is merely visiting the park."We train the monkeys to come back to their quarters and she will return later in the day when it becomes quieter. We will encourage her to come back with a favourite treat of mealworms."We have also separated the other squirrel monkeys who are calling to each other and that is also a way of getting her to come back. "She will be feeling vulnerable because she will not feel safe outside her familiar enclosure.
The monkeys are a very tight-knit group."Squirrel monkeys are very inquisitive, exploratory and active creatures who like to swing on their branches. "Part of the reason she left may have been the fruiting trees, since they like to eat fruit and leaf buds, as well as foraging for juicy grubs."They are not a dangerous animal – their enclosure is a walk through exhibit – and they pose no threat to the public. "However keepers are monitoring her to make sure she does not come down from the trees, since we wouldn't want her to meet a dog. "Their uniforms will also make her feel more reassured as she is used to them."The keepers found her out this morning. She will have escaped by a branch that was overhanging the enclosure. There are tree surgeons in there now making sure all the escape routes are closed."

Beast seen again ?

A Pete Murphy, posting on the This Is Local London website, briefly mentioned seeing a black cat, the size of a male boxer dog, around 7th August 2007.

He stated: "...(it was) walking from garage roof to other roof behind my kitchen window.There is a secondary school and sports ground behind my flat both of which were empty and locked up.Not far away is parkland heath and ancient woods which leads to Welling,Plumstead and Bexleyheath."

Crayford 'big cat'.

A passenger on a train has seen a black leopard.
The incident occurred late June 2007, when a Nicola Short was sitting on the train at Crayford station around 9:30 pm, when she was amazed to see a big, black cat descend a nearby tree and head off into the undergrowth. Although such a sighting may sound strange, reports of large felids around railway lines are very common.
Author and so-called 'big cat' researcher connects cats and railway lines in a paranormal manner, but this is complete rubbish. Cats such as leopards, puma and lynx use railway lines to navigate at night, as they are ideal routes to prowl into towns of a night as their is ideal cover along the shrub shrouded tracks. There is also an abundance of prey such as rabbits which live along the railway lines.
During the early hours and late at night railway stations are deserted locations, so a large cat could easily use the car parking areas, bridges and lines themselves to hunt in the same way they use areas of water, backyards etc, for cover.

High Wycombe Leopard

For the record, such an article is a good example at how inadequate reporters can be when covering 'big cat' stories. There has always been confusion for the press when identifying cat species, yet it's not a difficult task to undertakle when we consider that only three species of large cat are commonly sighted throughout the UK, the black leopard, the puma and the lynx, none of these resembling one another.

The mysterious Beast of Bucks has been spotted again by a couple near Hazlemere.
A large cat-like animal was seen by Suzanne Young, 19, of Quarrendon Road, Amersham, and her partner Matthew Tucker, 19, of Orchard Lane, Amersham, as they were driving back along Amersham Road from a night out in High Wycombe.
Suzanne, a secretary for Balfour Beatty in Manchester, said: "All of a sudden a very big cat trotted out in front of our car from one side of the road. We'd slowed down for a bend and saw a black blob on one side of the road.
"At first we thought it was a fox until our headlamps hit it. Once this happened it sprinted the rest of the way to the other side of the road. When we saw it in the light we realised it was far too big to be a fox, or even a dog. We weren't drunk as we were driving."
The couple went back to the scene of their sighting, just before the turning for Gravelly Way, on Sunday, and found some large paw prints in Common Wood, near Tylers Green.
"It was more for the sake of our sanity than anything else," Suzanne added.
"When we saw it in the light we realised it was far too big to be a fox, or even a dog."
Suzanne told the South Bucks Star that the creature she saw was about 3ft to 4ft tall, jet black, with a long tail.
She believes it to be the infamous "Beast of Bucks" although added that other people's accounts of it have sometimes differed.
She said: "A few older people I know have claimed to have seen it, like my grandad.
"This was definitely more like a puma than a panther."
Six years ago animal specialist Trevor Smith was called to help police after they took plaster casts of paw prints found on Wycombe Heights Golf Course, in Rayners Avenue, Loudwater. Experts confirmed that the tracks belonged to a young puma.
In February last year café owner Heather Brown told the Star how she spotted the giant feline while walking in the Chequers estate, near Princes Risborough. And a dog walker said he saw it on The Rye, High Wycombe, earlier this year.
Zoologists believe many exotic cats were released into the wild when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was passed in 1976 and owners could no longer keep them as pets.
2:00am Friday 6th July 2007 (This Is Local London)

A deadly Scorpion

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/weird/display.var.1500247.0.deadly_scorpion_lurks_in_supermarket_bananas.php

Escape of the snake

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/weird/display.var.1531833.0.cops_catch_escapee_snake.php