Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 242, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1910 — Strange Varmint Is Loose [ARTICLE]

Strange Varmint Is Loose

Wild Animal of Ferocious Mien Roaming About Section of New Jersey State. New York.—Caldwell, N. J., a community in which mystery has always been held to be a thing abhorrent, is puzzled about aynost to the point of hysteria by the appearance intermittently its .environs of a predatory animal ''of which nobody knows the name. The good folk of the pleasant countryside near Caldwell, Pine Brook, Clinton and Fairfield have been hunting the strange beast, but, while the animal has gone right on killing hens, calves and dogs, none of the huntsmen has got close enough to end its life. Oh, yes! Charley Rollins got close enough, but he had no gun. There was a tree handy and Mr. Rollins in placing himself in the topmost branches did some gymnastic work equal to any performance on the horizontal bars ever seen in the circus.

The other men, who had guns, never saw the animal. Mr. Rollins, whose eyesight is about as good as his agility, says the animal is about four feet long over all, that it is two and onehalf feet high, has a generous tail, and is yellow. Were it not for the dimensions given it might be a cat, but Mr. Rollins is sure it is as big as he says it is. Some persons think it is a panther, although what a panther would be doing at large in peaceful New Jersey, with the menagerie business in full blast all over the country, is another of those things that no citizen of Caldwell can find out. The alien has been seen on many occasions without the assistance of Jersey applejack, the effect of which on the gift of vision is proverbial, and until it is slain there will be more excitement in the vicinage of Caldwell than there has been since last circus day.