Page 16 - 20090506 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - May / June 2009

16 Niagara has the Invisible Cougar 16 Niagara has the Invisible Cougar Forget Bigfoot, UFOs all the time. People were calling in claiming Forget Bigfoot, UFOs or sea monsters they were seeing cougars everywhere. On the or sea monsters highway. In their backyard. At ladies' night at Niagara has the invisible the local pub. Niagara has the invisible But like Bigfoot sightings, there wasn't cougar any evidence. cougar By GRANT LAFLECHE By GRANT LAFLECHE Odd, no? I mean, you can go into the deepest jungles of Africa and photograph the most elusive predators on Earth, but apparently I once knew a guy who, if plied with enough rounds of bourbon and Coke, would cougars can move around Niagara without a regale you with the tallest of tall tales. trace. We find cats, dogs, deer and coyotes, but not a single cougar. He's encountered Bigfoot, you see. The Also odd that in Alberta, where I'm sasquatch in all of its nine-foot-tall, shaggy from, there are no problems finding cougars. glory was as plain as the nose on his face, he'll One of the first news stories I wrote was about May 17, 2009 these pictures were taken say. He's even got a footprint. Well, it's a photo a 175-pound cougar that was killing the from a mobile phone camera. They capture a of a vaguely foot-shaped blob. It might also be livestock of local ranchers. black disk shaped object that stayed in middle Sir John A. McDonald in profile. I can't really But then perhaps in Niagara they are of the sun for over 2 hours this afternoon. We tell. noncorporeal, invisible cougars that subsist on first noticed it and took a picture around 12:50 And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster PM and the last picture was taken around 3 PM. help you if you so much as doubt his word that field mice and pine cones. Several times during this encounter we saw 3 The point being that until there is some a giant ape-man once sat in his backyard and ate military jets flying directly at the object which garbage. solid evidence, our tax dollars can be better remained stationary. We also noticed another spent elsewhere and we can all take a deep, "I know what I saw!" he'll say and shoo light nearby that you can see changed directions you off with a broom. rational breath and realize the truth -- there is no and always had a nearby halo. You can see the cougar. It's the same all over I suppose. Here in Unless we can give him a cool name for streak in the sky from the military jets that were Niagara we have our own cadre of ghost tourists. How does "Niagara: Home of flying in the area. hunters, psychics and assorted UFO Snagglepus the Magic Cat" strike you? [] The photos were taken on Kent's East buffs who peddle the same nonsense as Bigfoot Hill. What military jets would spend the aficionados. These are the types wearing "I Weather Eye: are UFOs want to believe" Xfiles T-shirts and think the Weather Eye: are UFOs afternoon over Kent and Renton for and what a large black object would be doing staying moon landings were faked. a myth of the space age? stationary for over 2 hours is a mistery. a myth of the space age? But while venting about believing Following the sudden disappearance of Times Online improbable things, I will admit a good monster Times Online the black object is when the rainbow around the myth helps ye ole' tourist trade. sun appeared to us. [] Unfortunately, we don't have a On May 12, 1949, Donald Menzel, a Sasquatch or a Loch Ness Monster. Heck, we leading astronomer from Harvard University, Have you heard The don't even have an Ogopogo or a Blair Witch. reported seeing a UFO. He was driving through Have you heard The Hum? The throbbing The best we in Niagara have cooked up New Mexico at about 9.30pm when he saw a Hum? The throbbing is a cougar. Not a giant cougar, or a cougar that small, round, white light low on the horizon, noise that just won't go can sing and dance to Ragtime Gal. Just a plain, followed by another identical light alongside. noise that just won't go black cougar. Or sometimes it's brown. Or tan. Both lights grew brighter “as if possibly rising away? But mostly it's invisible. above a haze layer”, and turned from fuzzy into away? It doesn't even have a cool name like sharp focus. Dr Menzel watched the lights for a Mail Online Mail Online Bagheera, or Cougarific Jones, or Lance. It's not few minutes before each light suddenly even THE cougar. In fact as far as urban legends disappeared one after the other. It's a menace that drives thousands to go, the never-photographed cougar is pretty In 1953, though, Menzel wrote Flying distraction and has been blamed on lame. Saucers, the first book to debunk UFOs. In this everything from UFOs to nuclear The evidence for the existence of this he claimed to have explained the 1949 sighting submarines. A scientist claims he's found the feline is only slightly better than the evidence as a “reflection of the Moon off haze”. And he cause. Our man (who's heard it) listens in... suggesting that Paul McCartney really isn't the reviewed every other significant UFO sighting shoe-less guy on the cover of The Beatles' since the first flying saucer report in 1947, To the unaffected, it sounds suspiciously Abbey Road album. explaining them as hoaxes, mirages, weather like a case of mass hysteria. It is the stuff of The fact of the matter is there has only balloons or some other “conventional” dark conspiracies, cover-ups and general ever been one scrap of evidence found to phenomenon. In fact, Menzel described UFOs spookiness. But to 'sufferers', if that is the right indicate the possible presence of a cougar -- as a “myth of the space age”. word, this mysterious throbbing noise, which DNA found in Wainfleet in 2004. But even the The weather can, indeed, play some never goes away and exists right on the brink of scientist who confirmed it points out nothing strange tricks with lights in the sky, especially perception, is real and concrete enough to ruin conclusive has been found since. when a temperature inversion of warm air lives. But why worry about that when there is sitting on top of colder air can distort an image I have only experienced 'The Hum' - at public money to burn? The Ministry of Natural of a star. Most famous was in 1969, when least, I assume it was The Hum - once. I was Resources is spending $12,000 on motion and Governor Jimmy Carter, before he became about eight or nine years old, and I remember heat cameras to try and capture images of an President, saw an apparent UFO just after becoming aware of a rumbling noise, half-way animal there is very little reason to think is sunset — a bright light that changed from blue between a distant pneumatic drill and a badly actually out there. to red to white. “We were trying to figure out tuned diesel engine. It happened in the dead of But that doesn't stop people from what in the world it could be, and then it night, and kept me awake for hours. insisting it's real. And I fear this fine newspaper receded into the distance,” he recalled. But it I opened my window and turned my has a hand in it. was Venus. [] head this way and that in a futile attempt to Years ago, to my continuing chagrin, we locate the origin of the sound, which seemed to ran a photo from a freelancer of what is clearly UFO in the sun and be emanating from the end of our quiet street. UFO in the sun and a chubby house cat waddling about in some tall military jets grass under the headline: "Panther or fat house military jets Continued on Page 17 cat?" 570 KVI 570 KVI For weeks after that, it was all cougars The ‘X’ Zone Radio Show is Syndicated Internationally by the TalkStar Radio Network