another argument against going outside
n.b. - Granville, home of Denison University, is about ten miles north of us.
Granville man gets pictures of 'big cat'
GRANVILLE -- A year after the Granville Police Department last reported a sighting of a large, lion-like cat near Newark-Granville Road -- another sighting occurred around noon on Saturday.
This time, Rufus Hurst, 57, of Granville, had his camera ready.
"I was in my study working, and my wife and her sister were in the other room, and they called and said, 'Get your camera and come here quick,'" said Hurst, who lives on a one-acre lot on Brennan Drive, a third of which is wooded.
"Then I saw what they were talking about," he said, before snapping several photos from a distance.
Hurst described the cat as jet black, with a long black tail, with a stride measured from its tracks at about 3 feet from front to back paw.
The Hurst family called the Granville Police, who saw the cat before it left the yard. It slinked all the way across the backyard, looking around, before heading south through the woods toward Newark-Granville Road, he said.
Residents in the area have made reports of seeing large cats in the area in the past.
On Nov. 4, 2004, Granville Police mailed a letter to Granville residents about a possible lion sighting in the field across from Fackler County Gardens, also on Newark-Granville Road:
"Two of our officers located a large animal there that they felt could have been a lion," the letter read.
In the 2004 sighting, the officers noted the animal seen was brownish-yellow in color.
Police have not yet made any connections between the two sightings, one officer said, but a game warden from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources did measure footprints, and take cat feces for analysis.
The officer said it was definitely larger than a house cat.
In the 2004 letter, Granville Police noted that if a large cat is in the area, it was probably a pet at one time and could be used to people and could be dangerous.
Anyone with information can contact the Granville Police Department at (740) 587-1234.