WILD BEAST RAVAGING NEAR CANASERAGA
Andover News August 20, 1926
Farmers near Canaseraga are in a turmoil over the ruthless killing by some unknown wild beast, of much livestock, especially fowls.
The countryside about is latterly strewn with dead chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and wild game birds and animals. No pretense I made by the animal to eat the carcasses of the animals he kills. They are torn limb from limb, indicating that whatever it is it tortures its prey and kills them in the most merciless fashion. Examinations of the carcasses bring out that the animal sucks their blood.
There are scores of armed men searching the woods throughout that section but as yet no one has any real clue to the marauder. They have found huge tracks, which resemble that of a baboon to some extent about the country, and in one instance found where the animal had evidently vaulted a haystack.
Every animal on the farm of G. Warren has been killed and 150 chickens were killed on the Edward Twilliger farm.
A leopard is noted to have escaped August 10th, from the Oliver Hoton Zoo, near Middletown and a chimpanzee escaped about the same time from Elizabethport, N.J., neither of these animals had been captured, according to recent reports, but the authorities working on the killings at Canaseraga do not think in probable that either of these animals are responsible for the slaughter there, although it might be possible for them to have made their way this far since their escape.
Submitted by William A. Greene, Andover, 2007.