INTERNATIONAL (May 29, 2007)
There's an intruder in my bed ... a leopard!
ANAT BERESHOVSKY
A NEGEV resident woke up early on Monday morning to find an intruder in his bedroom.
A wild leopard had been chasing Arthur Damush's beloved cat around the house, and when the two animals entered his bedroom, Damush instinctively jumped out of his bed and caught the wild creature with his bare hands.
In the past two weeks residents of the area noticed that cats were slowly disappearing, and occasionally spotted the leopard sneaking between houses.
This time, however, the leopard decided to pay the Damush household a visit.
Raviv Shapira, head of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority's southern district, told Ynet: "Around 3am, a cat ran into the house, with the leopard chasing after him. The two animals lunged into the bedroom.
"The homeowner who was sleeping with his wife woke up and yelled: 'Leopard!', and at first thought he was seeing things. When the leopard used its teeth to grab the cat by its neck, the homeowner pounced on it and caught it with his hands."
Shapira added that this was the first time he had ever encountered a leopard entering a home.
After catching the animal, Damush told his wife to call their neighbour, Yossi Sinai, a Nature and Parks Authority inspector.
"The wife called me and she was very nervous and asked me to come over," Sinai said. "We arrived at the house, and saw Damush holding the leopard with his hands. We took over from that point. The fact that Damush was able to overpower the leopard is outstanding."
The leopard was taken for medical examination in order to determine if it had any diseases and to find out what caused it to get so close to the houses. A transmitter was fixed to the leopard in order to provide information on its whereabouts at all times.
The cat was lightly wounded and Damush, who was slightly scratched, was also taken for testing.
A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.
"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," said Arthur Du Mosch, 49, a nature guide. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."
Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said half a dozen leopards had been seen recently near Mr Du Mosch's small kibbutz in the Negev desert in southern Israel, although they rarely threatened humans.
Mr Shapira said leopards living near humans were usually too old to hunt in the wild and often resorted to chasing domestic dogs and cats for food.
Mr Du Mosch's pet cat was in the bed with him at the time, along with his young daughter, who had been frightened by a mosquito in her own room.
Mr Shapira said the leopard was very weak when park rangers arrived. He said nature officials would probably release it back into the wild.
Mr Du Mosch said that as a nature guide he was familiar with animals and did his best to hold down the leopard without harming it.
He said he took it all in his stride, "but the kids were excited".
AP
Israeli vetinary medical personnel perform tests on a leopard caught early morning as it entered a house in the Negev desert in southern Israel, during examinations at the Beit Dagan veterinarian hospital near Tel Aviv, Monday, May 28, 2007. Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half-dozen of the leopards have been spotted near the small community of Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel, "but we have never heard of a leopard coming into a private home," he said. He said it was food, not curiosity, that lured the cat.
