Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 23, 1995 TAG: 9509230003
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's every pet owner's worst nightmare come true: Something or someone is nabbing Back Creek pets.
Lucille Garst's brown Siamese cat, Buster, was the first to disappear.
Six weeks ago, Buster missed a meal at Garst's house. It was the first time in more than a year that the cat with green-blue eyes didn't show up for dinner. He's been missing ever since.
Bryan Thompson, who lives about a half-mile down the road from Garst, was the next to lose a pet. Thompson admits that his cat, Angel, has a penchant for wandering. But she had never been gone for more than a week - until now.
Then came Kelly and Frank Gonzalez's beloved Dinky.
Eighteen days ago he, too, disappeared.
"My kitty was there that morning at 5," said Kelly Gonzalez, who found Dinky nine years ago in a garbage can. But an hour after she saw her tiger-striped cat, he was gone.
And there have been others.
The latest count puts the toll at four cats and one dog that have vanished without a trace in the last six weeks. And they've all disappeared from three heavily wooded roads near Poage's Farm.
Gonzalez has hiked through the woods surrounding her home looking for Dinky. She ran an ad in the newspaper and canvassed her rural neighborhood.
At worst, she expected to find his body, run down by a car on her winding road.
Instead, she found nothing.
"It's strange how all of these animals are disappearing. ... In my gut, I have a feeling something fishy is going on," Gonzalez said.
Just about everybody is trying to crack the mystery.
Some hypothesize that it's a case of lions, tigers and bears - actually, mountain lions and bears preying on tiger-striped kitties and other pets.
"It could be a raccoon or a bear or another large animal up there feeding," Thompson said.
Frank Gonzalez doesn't rule out that possibility. He said he's heard strange howling noises at night.
But Roanoke County Crime Prevention Officer Tom Kincaid said the county has not received any reports of a large animal wandering those woods. He said he is more inclined to believe that if animals are disappearing, humans are to blame.
Garst's list of suspects also is topped by those a little higher up on the food chain - area residents who may have tired of unlicensed cats meandering through their yards.
Kelly Gonzalez swears she's seen suspicious cars on her road. She thinks someone could be trapping animals and selling them.
Her suspicions aren't completely unfounded. People do take animals that are on the loose, as Barry Davis recently learned firsthand.
The Davises, who live in the same neighborhood, found their two dogs, which had been missing for three weeks, a four-hour drive away in Fredericksburg.
The dogs had gotten loose and wandered up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, where a couple picked them up and claimed them for their own, Davis said.
Fliers the Davises distributed resulted in the dogs' return. People working at a hotel where the couple stayed, a carwash where they cleaned up the husky-Labrador mix and beagle mix, and a kennel where the dogs were put up for the night called the owners.
Davis said he doesn't believe foul play was involved.
"They didn't think the dogs belonged to anyone," Davis said, although one of his dogs did have a collar.
But whether the culprits are petnappers, hungry carnivores or animal lovers trying to adopt what they think are strays, Thompson said he's going to hold off on getting another cat and keep a closer watch on his dog until he finds out what happened to Angel.
"I'd be the last one to point a finger. But if something is happening up here, and we get some attention, then maybe whatever it is will stop," Thompson said.
by CNB