(Original headline: Panther panic strikes again )
Big game hunt launched in northern countryside
Piacenza - Italy has been hit by one of its periodic bouts of panther panic with a full-scale 'big game hunt' in the countryside around this northern city .
Authorities said they had sent out police and forest guards after several sightings of "a big cat, probably a panther" in the local hills .
They said the animal may have escaped from a circus "or the villa of some eccentric citizen" .
The latest feline flap followed a similar scare on the outskirts of Rome in February, when panic set in after six goats were found dead .
Locals calmed down when experts said the tooth marks on the goats were those of a big dog. The Piacenza hunt is Italy's seventh panther alert in just over a decade .
In December, Turin was shaken by panther fears after a series of sightings sparked rumours that a visiting Moscow zoo had lost one of its biggest draws .
The zoo squashed the reports, saying it had no panthers but only dogs, camels and horses .
The December reports revived memories of a wild cat chase near Turin six and a half years ago .
That 1999 report spurred copycat incidents as feline fever spread to the provincial border with Como .
Most of the other reports of predators on the loose have come amid midsummer news droughts known to journalistic insiders as "the silly season." Panthers were reported to have been sighted in the harsh landscape of central Sardinia in 2001 and the rolling countryside of central Umbria in 1993 and 1995 .
After the second Umbria sighting locals said they had also seen a lion roaming in the vicinity .
Earlier related story: Italians In Rome Panther Hunt
.:Story originally published by:.
ANSA / Italy - Apr 06.06
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  |
All Copyrights © are acknowledged.
Material reproduced here is for educational and research purposes only.
