Oops, I Thought I Saw a Puddy Cat

Oops, I Thought I Saw a Puddy Cat

Oops the Snow Monkey escaped from Mill Mountain Zoo and has been at large for almost a week now. She’s been spotted crossing the Mill Mountain spur road, feeding in the grass behind Roanoke Memorial Hospital, swimming in Carvin’s Cove, and scaling the Wachovia Tower. At first, the zoo discouraged untrained volunteers from searching the woods for Oops because they were concerned that she may launch sneak attacks and rip flesh. It’s also come to light that it was a zoo volunteer that liberated Oops when her cage was being cleaned, so perhaps the zoo staff simply had no faith in volunteers. However, as time has marched on with no successful trapping of this Japanese Macaque, officials are now encouraging armies of volunteers to scour the 500 adjoining mountainous acres surrounding the mountaintop zoo. The possibility of finding this wayward monkey despite the risk of flesh eating monkey attacks apparently now outweighs the safety of do-gooders.

The saga of Oops the Snow Monkey has sparked one of my most deeply repressed childhood memories. It reminds me of the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, except in this case the boy was me and the wolf was a wild feline and real.

I was about three or four years old back in the early 1960’s. I led a wonderful life back then as the youngest of four children. Sometimes, I suppose, the youngest is granted all of the attention, as long as they are below the two year old age threshold. During those first two years, a kid is regarded as cute and lovable; people want to engage these cute creatures. I was cuter than most. However, when I turned two and pushed onward to three and four, spoiled from all of my attention, I soured those who used to dote on me. So for the first time in my life, I found myself having to use my native cleverness and imagination to entertain myself. I suppose I was pretty good at this.

It was an early spring late afternoon, and I was roaming the back forty. We lived in a two story Cape Cod house with a postage stamp front yard and a slightly larger postage stamp back yard. I was always drawn to the big white pine tree that grew on the south side boundary of our property. The tree was quite tall and shaded both our property and our neighbor’s, the Angle’s. On one side of the tree closest to the house, my mother maintained a bed of beautiful purple irises and a mature red-berried Dogwood. On the other side of the pine tree along the property line, my father cultivated an arbor of concord grapes, which by mid summer resembled a tangled jungle temple. I loved roaming through this plush area of our yard. The pine tree laid a soft carpet of needles directly below that was just perfect for playing on with toy bulldozers and dump trucks.

On that afternoon, I was minding my trucks under my tree when I happened to look up in the fading light of late afternoon bordering on twilight. What I saw was unexpected and somewhat startling. Quietly treading just on the neighbor’s side of the grape arbor was some kind of large orange animal. I couldn’t quite get a clear view of it with all of the white pine branches and grape leaves blocking my view, so I backed out from under my hide-away and retreated toward the house.

Glancing back just before I went in the back door, I got a clear glimpse of this creature, a beautiful full grown Bengal Tiger. Frozen, I stood and stared, gaping at his tell-tale orange and black stripes and his big cat whiskers sprouting from his cat-smiling face. His massive paws were moving his huge body deftly along the property line through my mother’s irises and towards the back of our house.

Suddenly the shock and the fear caused me to bolt inside and scream my discovery to anyone within range. “There’s a TIGER” out there! Mom (always call mothers first, rule of life), MOM! There’s a TIGER out back…Dad! Mom! Dad! Come quick!

Within seconds, my parents came running from different directions, converging on my hysterical screams, most likely worried that their youngest had fallen prey to some yard danger. “What’s wrong? My mother asked in her most protective mother voice.

Pointing. “There’s a tiger out there!”

“Where?”

“Out there…by the pine tree…”

“Oh Tommy, there’s no tiger out there. Tigers don’t live around here, they live far away.”

“Yes, Tommy, you're probably just imagining it all because I read you that Jungle Book story last night. There are no Tigers here, Tommy,” assured my father.

“But I saw it, I know I did, I SAW it!”

Dad then tugged me gently by the arm and said, “Well, let’s go and check it out, come on.”

So with me allowing him to take point, Dad led my mother and me outside into the wild backyard. I treaded very closely to my father’s leg as I peered carefully around him. Reaching around as we got closer, I shouted and pointed, “There! There! That’s where he was. Over there by the Dogwood.”

Of course by now, with dusk giving way to the dark wolf’s mouth of night, there was no Bengal Tiger to be seen.

“You probably just saw one of the cats, probably Muffin Man. He’s always hanging out over there and he’s orange. That’s most likely what it was, just a cat. Light can play tricks on your eyes sometimes.”

Mom interjected, “He’s right honey, it must have been one of the cats; it’s all right.”

I’ve always been a shade stubborn; ok, I’ve always been very stubborn, and when my parents claimed that the Bengal Tiger I saw clearly with my two focused non-lying eyes was just a regular house cat, I just exploded. “It WAS a tiger! I know it! I saw it! It WAS a TIGER!” Then I squirmed away from them and ran into the house crying.

Looking back on that foggy memory through the veil of over forty years, I still believe that I saw a Bengal Tiger that day. To the best of my knowledge, my tiger was never spotted again and roamed free and lonely in the suburbs and mountains surrounding Roanoke, Virginia until slipping from this Earth.

Late word on the Oops search details a recent discovery of fresh berry-filled droppings in the woods behind Roanoke Memorial Hospital…[here we go…I can’t resist…it’s coming…]. No doubt tomorrow’s headline in the Sunday Times will read: Fresh Hope Found in Oops Poop I’m looking for the companion piece about the demolition of Victory Stadium, Roanoke Loses Its Monkey.