Lou’s View: MISSING LYNX

By Lou Bernard

It wasn’t an ordinary trapping day for Adam Brittain.

I mean, things seemed to be happening normally. At first. Brittain lived on the east end of Sugar Valley, and was out trapping animals. It was a common activity for him, and for a lot of people in Sugar Valley in 1905. A wild agricultural area, Sugar Valley had a lot of people who supplemented their diet with meat they captured themselves. Just a normal day. Nothing to see here.

But in early September, he had a week that got progressively more unusual—To the point his escapade made page two of the Clinton Republican on September 13, 1905.

He was working on trapping porcupines specifically, with the hopes of maybe a bobcat or two. Chances are he wouldn’t have turned down the occasional rabbit. One night, just like always, he walked around and set out traps.

The next morning, when he went out, he found one of his traps sprung. And moved. Not only was it set off, it wasn’t where he’d left it—Brittain found it a few yards away. Also the bait was gone, which was a pretty impressive feat for an animal, overall.

“This trick was so cleverly done he concluded at once that it had been the work of something more clever than a porkie,” the Republican reported.

So he did the obvious thing, and put out another trap. This one was heavier, more solid, and chained to a tree. And he used a tightly secured calf head as bait—In Sugar Valley, largely a farming area, it’s shocking if you don’t have a calf head lying around someplace. (Not for the first time, I hope PETA doesn’t read my column.)

When Brittain went back to check the trap the next day, at first he thought he’d caught someone’s dog. A large one. As he got closer, he realized it wasn’t a dog, or anything even remotely domesticated.

“He wasn’t prepared for the surprise that awaited him the next morning,” said the article. “When he was within sight of the trap he saw an animal as big a s a good-sized dog, with close-cropped ears and a visage as keen as the slyest old fox that even nosed in and out among the Seven Mountains. Though Brittain has been trapping ever since he was a boy, he had never seen anything like his prize of this occasion.”

Do the words “American Lynx” mean anything to you?

Clearly, the animal wasn’t from around here. They were believed to be extinct in America, and had been for quite some time. Brittain contacted a local old man named Harter, who identified it—Harter had hunted lynx as a young man, but hadn’t seen one in over forty-five years. 

The lynx was still alive, by the way, and really, really mad. It fought like hell. The newspaper said,”The animal, though a prisoner, was brazen as a pirate and inclined to give battle.” Two shots from a rifle were necessary to kill it.

“The capture was not without excitement,” the newspaper said, understating the case by a long shot.

Nobody had any idea where the lynx had come from. Speculation was that it had come through the Seven Mountains from around Brush Valley, though nobody knew that for sure. Oh, and also, it seemed likely there was another one. That night, when he was out placing more traps, Brittain heard an unfamiliar yowling sound coming from around the area.

 Obviously, he wasn’t entirely done with the large trap just yet. I hope he had another calf head available….Who am I kidding? It was Sugar Valley. He probably had several.