My With a Panther

Hokitika Guardian, 2 June 1921, Page 3

My With a Panther

(By a Big-Game Hunter)

David Livingstone, the African explorer, said that he felt a pleasurable sensation when seized by a lion. 1 did not experience any pleasure in the jaws of a panther. The animal had been shot through the body and I was following it up. These cats will conceal themselves in an incredibly small space, and the beast suddenly rushed out upon me from a depression in the ground, in which it had been invisible from a few yards’ distance.

It did not spring but rushed at me, giving vent to coughing roars. I fired two shots but failed to stop it. and in a moment 1 was borne to the ground.

The panther’s In-eatli, tainted by the putrid llesli on which it bad been feeding, was very foul when it put its face in mine. I raised an arm to protect my throat, and its teeth met in the fleshy part of the forearm. The panther was a very large specimen and its weight was sufficient to bear me to the ground, bringing me heavily on the back of my bead in a thorn bush. This pulled what was left of my arm out of its mouth, whereupon it embedded the elaws of'one paw in the calf of my leg and seized my thigh in its jaws, the long canine teeth penetrating some two inches. When it left me it walked off, turning to look again before entering the jungle, where it presently died. When it turned its head I thought for a moment that it was coming back to make another meal or to lap up the blood, of which there was plenty about. i was laid up for about six weeks, and poisonous wounds are very painful. No, 1 cannot agree with Dr Livingstone ! -X- * * * * T have seen several men seized, and 1 should say that their experiences were equally painful. One was seized by the waist by a tiger and bis entrails were exposed. He told me bow it happened but was not in a condition to discuss the question, although be lived a few hours. Another was bitten and clawed in the back and shoulders by a tiger—quite close to me. He did not express any pleasure either and was six months in recovering. A tiger bit off the top of a lunn’s

skull, just as one takes the top off an | egg; the corpse was in a sitting posture and his remarks are not on record. The body of a boy, half devoured by a I panther, was found in the fork of a tree which served as a larder; he had j ho opportunity of describing his sensa- 1 tions. Another boy, who was seized by the throat and devoured close to a village near my camp, had not time to speak. . i 1 could refer to other cases of which J have been a witness, but none of them appealed to feel any pleasurable sensations.