[00:00.50]Lesson 1
[00:02.11]A puma at large
[00:09.15]Where must the puma have come from?
[00:13.83]Pumas are large, cat-like animals which are found in America.
[00:18.47]When reports came into London Zoo that a wild puma had been spotted forty-five miles south of London,
[00:25.60]they were not taken seriously.
[00:28.48]However, as the evidence began to accumulate,
[00:33.04]experts from the Zoo felt obliged to investigate,
[00:36.43]for the descriptions given by people who claimed to have seen the puma were extraordinarily similar.
[00:43.11]The hunt for the puma began in a small village where a woman picking blackberries saw 'a large cat'only five yards away from her.
[00:52.95]It immediately ran away when she saw it,
[00:56.31]and experts confirmed that a puma will not attack a human being unless it is cornered.
[01:02.28]The search proved difficult,
[01:04.97]for the puma was often observed at one place in the morning and at another place twenty miles away in the evening.
[01:11.89]Wherever it went, it left behind it a trail of dead deer and small animals like rabbits.
[01:18.70]Paw prints were seen in a number of places and puma fur was found clinging to bushes.
[01:24.66]Several people complained of 'cat-like noises' at night and a businessman on a fishing trip saw the puma up a tree.
[01:33.52]The experts were now fully convinced that the animal was a puma,
[01:38.53]but where had it come from?
[01:40.54]As no pumas had been reported missing from any zoo in the country,
[01:44.89]this one must have been in the possession of a private collector and somehow managed to escape.
[01:51.51]The hunt went on for several weeks,
[01:53.94]but the puma was not caught.
[01:56.74]It is disturbing to think that a dangerous wild animal is still at large in the quiet countryside.