If You Go Down To the Woods Today.
Is there a panther on the loose? Cat Turnell went to find out at the first British Big Cats ConferenceIn the upstairs room of a country pub bristling with men in fleece tops and sturdy footwear, father and son David and Nigel Spencer hold a crowd in thrall. David, dressed in a grey suit, and Nigel, casual in an untucked shirt and jeans, stand beside a TV flicking through stills of a dead sheep that looked as if it had met the alien in Predator before baa-ing its last.
"You can't tell me a dog would do that," says Nigel to a rapt audience, as the animal's exposed rib cage stares unhealthily back from the screen.
The man from Leicestershire and Rutland Pantherwatch would seem to have a point.
"This was taken at a farm in Leicestershire," he continues, as a breakfast-bothering close-up of the sheep flashes behind him. "The fleece was torn clean off."
Chosen for its central location and its proximity to a number of big cat sightings, the conference room of The Sun Inn Hotel, just outside Market Harborough, is hosting the first British Big Cats Conference.
For three days, the picture-postcard village of Marston Trussell is the nucleus for Britain's experts, eye-witnesses and big cat groups.
As the Spencers' talk draws to a close, a plaster cast paw print the size of a woman's hand is passed around the room.
It's a seductively tangible lump of cat evidence.
Taken from an imprint found at the bottom of a Castle Cement quarry in Rutland in 1998, it is supposed to belong to a panther.
It is not only in Leicestershire that exotic felines are thought to tread.
There are thousands of big cat sightings in Britain every year - with 2,123 between April 2004 and July 2005.
The words "conspiracy" and "collusion" abound in the inn.
The men in black, in this instance, are officials from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
To Defra, big cats are a modern X-File, belonging to the same ethereal realm as UFOs, ghosts and fairies.
"Based on the evidence, Defra does not believe that there are big cats living in the wild in England," comes the expected response when asked.
Unsurprisingly, it's not a popular stance here today.
"A puma is a puma is a puma," is the mantra of the formidably eccentric Jon Downes, director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ), in north Devon.
CFZ is an organisation which researches "unknown animals", among other things.
Having no small resemblance to leviathan wrestler Giant Haystacks, Jon says the reason for Defra's wall of silence is logistical.
"If a politician admits something exists, they have to do something about it.
"It's like everyone knew full well of the cocklers up in the north west."
Jon saw his first big cat in the New Forest in 1995, while on the way home from a gig.
"I saw something very briefly," he says. He has made more sightings since.
The majority of cats currently "spotted" roaming the highways and byways of Britain are alleged by believers to be the fallout of the 1976 Dangerous Animals Act.
Exotic cats such as panthers and leopards were popular in the 1960s.
When the Act came in, many owners are said to have dumped them in the countryside instead of having them destroyed.
"Stoned pop stars have a lot to answer for," says Jon with mock exasperation.
Working in the music industry 30 to 40 years ago, he knew of friends who had them and set them free.
The highlight of today's conference is a tour of the areas of Leicestershire where big cats have been sighted. The Leicester Mercury hitches a lift with 30-year-old Eifion Rees, from country magazine The Shooting Times, and John Michelle, author of science fiction tome View Over Atlantis.
Winding through the hills and villages of the south east of the county, Jon, 73, suddenly spots something against the landscape.
"Look over there," he gestures, as we both crane our necks.
"Did you see a cat?" asks Eifion.
"No," he says, "a big tent. I did see two big black animals," he teases, "but I think they were cows."
At a railway bridge in Tilton, overlooking a mossy-hued ravine which was once the Great Central Railway line and is now a track for horses and bikes, the group makes a pit stop.
It is a favoured location for big cat sightings. A farmer a stone's throw away has found several sheep carcasses stripped to the bone.
The cats, says Nigel Spencer, like to use the former train line as a way to go unnoticed, traversing the length and breadth of the country.
Terry Dye, from Big Cats in Britain, has made the journey from Cambridge. The sun has gone in and his skin is an unhealthy purple as he fervently scans the horizon.
Shivering and with a set of binoculars hung around his neck, does he expect to see something?
"Not really," he shrugs, "I'm hoping, but I don't expect to.
"I saw one in Lincoln in 2003. We had a three day and night stake-out.
"I turned up on the last day and we had a telephone call to say it had been seen up the road.
"As I turned around, it was walking past. It was as big as an Alsatian. It growled at me."
There are others in this mish-mash of folk, however, who remain wholly unconvinced about the big cat tales.
"I think we've got more chance of seeing a train," remarks Tony Francis, from TV programme Heart of the Country, as he stares down at the deserted cutting.
He's with a film crew hoping to catch an animal on camera. He looks depressed.
Next we go to Knossington, where the group lands at the doorstep of Sally Knight, a farmer's secretary living at the foot of a sweeping sheep pasture.
She has seen a big cat twice in Somerby and a puma in the woods at Woodhouse Eaves.
"I did a double-take at first, I thought it was a dog," she tells the group, as a microphone dangles precariously over her head.
In the past, she has also found a stripped-clean sheep carcass.
"A dog wouldn't strip the bones like that," she says.
"They were almost bleached, like something you see in Africa."
What about the direct evidence?
Why has no-one seen a big cat carcass?
"I think it's extraordinary we haven't found a dead one," she ponders. "The hunt hasn't flushed one out."
In the end, there was just one confirmed big cat sighting that weekend.
The exotic feline was found in the homely confines of The Sun Inn Hotel's welcoming mahogany bar.
It was attached to the pump handle of The Grainstore Brewery's Rutland Panther - a rather delicious mild.
Leicestershire Mercury: 29th March 2006