Humans have introduced animals from many areas in the world into ecosystems where they do not belong—think of the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco as an example. For Ben Lilly, of Halifax in the north of England, to spot what seemed to be a leopard body in the middle of a road was certainly an unusual sight.
When he got closer, the driver was sure he saw the spotted fur of a big cat. “I got out cautiously, because I didn’t want something taking my face off,” Lilly said, “but as soon as I looked at it from the other angle I started laughing.”
Fortunately for Lilly, the exotic leopard in the road was nothing but a leopard-spotted woman’s coat.
Lilly, a 40-year-old IT worker, had been driving along the A646 near the town of Hebden Bridge when he spotted the strange sight. “As I passed it, I looked out the passenger’s window and saw the markings on it,” the befuddled driver explained. The fact that it had a belt with the same spotted fabric pattern made the leopard sighting seem even more plausible. “It had the tail bit on it too, so it looked really real while I was driving,” he said.
Another factor contributing to the illusion was the string of big-cat sightings in the United Kingdom. “Living near the Pennines,” Lilly said, referring to a chain of small mountains in the North of England, “you do often see road kill in the road—foxes, badgers or the odd person’s pet.”
Lynxes, caracals, ocelots, and even pumas have supposedly been spotted over the past few decades across the area, adding credence to the possibility. “You hear of these sightings of big cats and around the Halifax area, there have been reports before,” he said.
Upon finding a safe place to turn around, Lilly headed back toward the mysterious spotted creature on the road. “I spun round where I could, turned round and drove back along. I looked again—it looked real,” he recounted. “I crept up with my phone out and as the angle changed, I felt like I was on candid camera ... I was chuckling to myself.”
Once Lilly’s post went viral, several other locals posted their own sightings of the “leopard,” adding that they also had to do a double-take when they spotted it. “When I came back later, someone had pushed it onto the pavement,” Lilly admitted. “Other drivers were obviously thinking the same thing, but I was just silly enough to stop.”
To be fair, an amateur photographer named John Pearson snapped a picture of a very large black cat at nearby St. Aidan’s Nature Reserve in summer 2019.
Pearson posted the picture, which he took from about 650 feet away, online, and many identified the cat as a puma. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. That’s why it caught my eye,” Pearson said.
Although Lilly got a good chuckle and plenty of social media attention for his faux feline, the real big cats of England could still be out there.
