Farmers are being warned to watch out for a big cat lurking on Illawarra Rd, between Carrick and Longford, following a sighting that caused a truck driver to stop in his tracks.
Ray Brooks, of Ulverstone, a truck driver for Booth Transport, was on his way from the Quoiba base to Cascade Brewery in Hobart when he slowly pulled out of the Bass Highway sliproad onto Illawarra Rd at 2am on Friday.
Powerful spotlights picked up the big black cat on the edge of the road – its size so unusually large that Ray pulled the Kenworth over to take a closer look.
“I’m talking way larger than normal, as big as my staffy cross dog and as black as anything, but it was quick to slink off into the nearby bush before I could get a photo,” Ray said.
So rattled by what he had seen, Ray pulled over at the Longford truck stop and asked the question on social media, had anyone else spotted it on the way through?
“There were several trucks in front of me and no doubt more coming behind so I was hoping I wasn’t the only one to spot it,” he said.
“I was so pumped up I couldn’t stop thinking about it all the way to Hobart!”
The former King Islander and experienced hunter reckons he is a good judge of wildlife, size and distance – and still he’s unsure of what he spotted.
However with lambing in full swing and a paddock full of sheep nearby, he wanted farmers to keep an eye out for anything attacking their stock.
Well aware of the occasional reports of big cats that are rumoured to be pumas or other exotic felines escaped from zoos or circuses, Ray is clear that it wasn’t as big as that.
“But it was some kind of huge feral cat, it looked as big as a maine coon, and I’d love to get a closer look!”
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