Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1889 — A Wildcat’s Awful Leap. [ARTICLE]

A Wildcat’s Awful Leap.

“I’ve seen it disputed in the papers that a wildcat, or a catamount, can make a leap of twenty-five feet,” said a resident of Sullivan county to a New York Sun man, “and I would like to mention what I saw a wildcat do once. I was trout fishing on one of the upper tributaries of the Beaverkill and had clambered down into a deep ravine to get at a tempting pool at the foot of a fall, where I was sure my casts would be rewarded by the killing of some big trout. I was not mistaked as to that. I had landed four trout, the smallest one eighteen inches long, and sat down to ‘rest the pool.’ Both sides of the ravine ■were perpendicular walls of rock, probably twenty-five feet high. The summit of the wall on the side of the creek opposite to me sloped back gradually from its edge for several feet to a heavy growth of pine. “As I was sitting at the bottom of the ravine I happened to glance up to the top of the rocks opposite me and saw a hen pheasant, accompanied by her newly hatched brood, come out of the pines and scratch and peck her way along the sloping open space, hunting food for her young, which clustered closely about her. The pheasant came very close to the precipice, and it seemed to me that she was placing her brood in a most dangerous position when she turned as if to walk back with them to the pines. The instant she turned something like a shadow flitted across the top of the ravine, and half a second later I saw an enormous wildcat clinging to the edge of the opposite wall by its fore-feet, holding the pheasant between its jaws. The wildcat struggled for a moment to drag himself from the edge of the abyss to a sure footing on the top of the rocks, but his effort was in vain, and he came crashing down the face of the precipice still holding the luckless pheasant in his jaws. He fell with a splash in the water and lay motionless at the edge of the pool. “I supposed that the animal had been watching the pheasant from the bushes on top of the rocks opposite where the bird had appeared with her brood, and at his opportunity had leaped across to seize her, but had misjudged the distance, a.<d fallen short with the result so fatal to him, “The whirl of the water brought the wildcat around in a short time to the side where I was standing, and as I was bending down to examine him I saw a man with a gun scrambling dow n the rocks. The man soon reached my side, and then I learned that he had shot the wildcat as the animal was flying across the chasm upon his prey. Sure enough, just at the base of the animal’s brain was the hole made by the rifle ball. The hunter had been following the w ildcat for some time, and had lost track of him, but came near the edge of the ravine in time to see him make his leap and follow’ him with the bullet. It was that which had stopped the animal short in the tremendous leap it had calculated on, or it would hav6 cleared the space with safety and doubtless with ease. The wildcat was in reality almost in his death tlrroes when he struck the pheasant, which he had clung to with the clutch of death, and still held in his mouth w’hen we dragged him out of the water. We measured the width of the chasm across which the wildcat had made his -death leap. The measurement was lorty-three feet.”