Bubba the milk goat found dead. Georgia farmer calls cops; suspects include ‘panther’
Bubba, the crystal-white LaMancha dairy goat, lay dead, his throat cut or slit or somehow fatally gashed.
There was no autopsy. There were, however, suspects — an array of local wildlife — but no known witnesses, at least none that were talking.
Upon finding Bubba expired, his owner, a 64-year-old man who also raises cattle at a farm along Blue Ridge School Road in northeastern Monroe County, called the law.
The attack, he said, happened in the countryside shrouded by forestland above Forsyth, not far below Castleberry Creek, roughly seven miles east of Interstate 75.
The farmer reported that he was awakened in the wee hours of May 11 by a barking dog. The farmer said that at daybreak he discovered Bubba’s 250-pound carcass.
“Something cut the goat’s throat,” the farmer later told The Cop Shop. “The same night, one of my great big old Hereford cows, something got on him so bad it had ate him all up in the hock. Bit off part of his tail.”
Asked what may be responsible for the carnage, the farmer surmised, “I’m thinking it’s a panther. I seen a panther out there once.”
State wildlife officials say big cat sightings often turn out to be bobcats, coyotes or even dogs. The farmer acknowledged as much, saying “a heavy pack” of coyotes has been known to roam the area.
The farmer, in the wake of Bubba’s death, launched an investigation. He used Bubba’s carcass as bait. He lugged the slain goat to the back of his property and placing it there to see if the attacker might return.
“The first night, I stayed till dark, but nothing came,” he said. “The next day, I went back from dawn all the way up until dark. Nothing. But the next morning something had took the whole goat. Whatever it was, picked it up in its mouth and toted it away.”
The pine straw that coats the ground there, he said, wasn’t so much as ruffled. There was nary a track. Whatever it was made a stealthy escape.
Said the farmer: “I ain’t figured it out.”
Dispatches: A lookout bulletin was posted the other day by the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office. It seems that a guy driving a 20-year-old Honda Accord was harassing people in parking lots outside Kroger supermarkets. The man, in an apparent ruse, was going around asking people if he could use their cellphones to call someone to help him buy gas. “When the person he approached offered to dial the number for him, he refused,” the bulletin noted. “In some cases, he became angry and aggressive.” The silver car he was in will not be difficult to spot. There’s a large white sticker on its windshield, which reads: “Big Sexy Red” or “Big Red Sexy” or, as the bulletin helpfully noted, “some combination of those words.” . . . At a bond hearing in Peach County Superior Court on May 19, a lawyer for a man facing drug-distribution charges asked a judge to set bond. The lawyer said his client had a drug problem, an addiction to methamphetamine, which had troubled the man since 2003. “He does have a meth problem,” a prosecutor later agreed. “His problem is he possesses meth with intent to distribute.” Bond was denied.
This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.