MikePadgett.com

Legend on the prowl

— A mysterious black panther spotted near Arlon last week has precedents in other European cultures.”

Apparently, a black panther has been spotted stalking through the forest near Arlon.

With this latest in a string of sightings, no-one yet seems capable of answering the forgotten question: just how on earth did a panther come to be in the Arlon forest anyway?

I was disbelieving at first: the matter came up in a throwaway lunchtime conversation. Later I dimly recalled from the recesses of childhood memory a sort of pull-out poster entitled Haunted Britain. A charming, hand-illustrated map on which there appeared prominently a rather imaginatively titled Black Dog.

In fact, this canine’s placement – somewhere north of Hadrian’s Wall, in that land where no-one civilised would dare tread – was either pure chance or for dramatic effect. Indeed the truth, as the truth tends to be, was something entirely more elastic.

For having presumably survived for centuries on a diet of rainwater and half-rotted mutton, man’s least best friend traverses the country scaring drivers, farmers and kids from Devon to Lancashire, sometimes on the same night.

He’s obviously a frequent passenger on the sort of freight train that travels so late it can only be carrying nuclear waste. And whenever he fancies a holiday from all that mangy meat, this black fellow takes a Sally over to Normandy where locals call him ‘Rongeur d’Os’, or ‘Bone Gnawer’. I suppose French cuisine isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Over at Arlon though, our panther’s a feline and various Walloons have espied him/her skulking about. “Walking around the forests alone is inadvisable” says a joint press release from We the Undersigned Mayors. It’s a flourish of local cooperation so rare you know it must be serious. “Children must be accompanied by their parents when walking in this area”, we’re told.

I can really see people flocking there in droves this weekend, can’t you?