Excerpts:
A Peregrine Falcon stooping on pigeons perched on St Paul's Catherdral was the journalistic response to a story in a rival newspaper of a seal in the Thames near Westminster Bridge. As it turns out, both these stories were fake but prophetic.
I have seen a puma several times in the wilds of Surrey. So, why share this now and in such a fashion? Why not report observations to the media? This is not my puma or anyone else's puma but a wild animal, just as two black labradors are not my dogs but friends who are animals and live with me.
'Experts' tramp the countryside drawing sensational blanks and forget the basic code of natural history observation. JW Fortescue, in his introduction to Tarka the Otter, captures the heart of this code. 'The spirit of Dartmoor and of Exmoor is, above all, the spirit of the waters, and to Mr Williamson it is a spirit so familiar as to have become a part of himself.'
Since writing this, labrador Cromarty has died and labrador Ross is now fourteen. We saw the puma again yesterday: after the puma saw us.