SEEN AGAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 224, 22 September 1925, Page 8

SEEN AGAIN.

THE LEOPARD AT MT. ALBERT. REPORTED THIS MORNING. SKULKING AMONG THE ROCKS. "There goes the leopard!" cried out a young girl from the verandah of a house in Alberton Road this morning. An excited "Where. ' from the others was answered by her pointing over the roadway to a rocky rise, topped by a stone wall, and with a gorse and black-berry-covered ditch at the roadside. The spot is just at the back of the Baptist chapel, a little beyond the twopenny section on the Mount Albert tramline. Like the country round about the Zoo it is rocky and* full of cover for such an animal as the escaped leopard. Bracken, long grass, gorse and other growth give the district a wild appearance, and the hollows and holes left by the way in which the rocks have been tumbled down by Nature, make it an ideal .pot for anything wild. Whether the girl was mistaken or not it is difficult to say, but the beaters had been over the ground just before the animal was seen to lope over the top of the rising ground, spring down the side, and then with one bound from an old disused roadway that runs just above the present thoroughfare. she cleared the intervening space and landed somewhere in the ditch before mentioned. An alarm was raised at once and the beater? were recalled. The last of them only had to walk back a few yards to come to the spot where tile leopard was supposed to be lurking. Armed with stout sticks several beaters with some local help went thoroughly up and down the ditch, but there was not the slightest sign of anything with spots on it. There was a lot of dry gorse alongside the road, and this was then fired, but neither flames nor smoke brought anything to light, and the hunters had to conclude that if it really was the leopard that had been seen, it had sneaked off somewhere.

Although it is the best known animal in. or rather out of, the Zoo. no one seems quite certain what a leopard is like, beyond the fact of spots—about which there is of course much play of wit, which has nothing to do with the temperance movement. This being so all reports of people having seen the missing female must be accepted with caution. But it seems pretty certain that it was she that was seen in Mr. J. Ferriday's garden opposite St. Luke's Church, which is not far from where it was supposed to have appeared this morning. A large cage with a trap door and a tempting piece of beef was left in Mr. Ferriday's garden last night, but the invitation was declined. Tracks in St. Luke's Vicarage. Tracks of an animal that might be the leopard were :?een this morning by the family of the vicar of St. Luke's (the Rev. A. J. Beck), whose place is alongside the church, and right opposite . Ir. Ferriday's garden. These tracks were new and were in addition to those seen in the vicarage ground yesterday, so there i . not much doubt that this neighbourhood is the runaway's lurking ground.

It will be remembered that on Wednesday evening last —the day the animal got away- —a "strange cat with, spots" was noticed by a family living in Malvern Road, which is also in Mount Albert, but rather nearer the Zoo, s-o that it is quite possible this was the leopard herself, and that being so she must have been hanging about the same ground for the last six days. Anyone who knows the broken volcanic nature of the back sections of Mount Albert will realise that an animal not quite so large as a small collie and of the secretive habit of the leopard would easily find plenty of hiding places. But what about food?

Hen roosts abound in the neighbourhood, but so far no raids have been reported. One resident living in Taylor's Road, which runs off St. Luke's Road and is about three hundred yards from the main road, lost seven bens last Friday, and in the absence of any other theory the leopard is getting the credit for the theft.

Tlie hunting party was out all this morning scouring the likely ground to the south of St. Luke's Church, but without success.