A dog walker in Ferndown was terrified when she came face-to-face with an animal the size of lion on the local playing field early this morning.
“It just came out of the fog at me,” said Amelia Johannson from West Parley. “My poor little poodle leapt into my arms whining. He was shaking like a leaf and so was I.” Amelia was walking Muppet on King George V Playing Field at 8am.
Luckily Amelia’s car wasn’t far away and she was able to run to safety. “Once Muppet and I were in the car, I felt safe. The animal just stared at us. It looked like a panther,” said Amelia who took the photo through the car window with her phone.
On hearing about the sighting, local wild cat enthusiast Michael Grinner said, “Judging from the photograph, I would say this is either an escaped panther, which could have broken loose from a private collection or a grossly oversized domestic feline. Cats are getting bigger these days because people feed them too much. It definitely wasn’t a dog.”
Medium and mind-reader Jilly Starlight disagreed. “I know this to be the Ferndown lion,” she said. “I’ve seen it myself. There used to be a zoo in Ferndown and this is the ghost of the lion that lived at the zoo. It has haunted these fields for about 50 years.”
Following a search of the area by trained marksmen, no trace of the animal that Amelia photographed could be found.
