A group launched a search yesterday in a mountainous area in Linkou Township (
County police received a report the previous day from a goat farmer in Linkou, who said that earlier that day that 10 of his 100 goats had been mauled to death by "some large feline."
An Indonesian worker who told police she had witnessed the attack said she had just entered a sheep pen to feed the animals when "a big animal" roared at her, whereupon she fell down the stairs.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The worker fled the scene and immediately awakened the farm owner, Huang Jung-ko (
Huang told reporters his employee said the creature was definitely a big tiger and that she could not believe Taiwan still had wild tigers.
Huang checked the pen and found that eight sheep had been slaughtered. Two others had been devoured, with only parts of their skeletons and some organs left.
This was a horrible bloodbath, Huang said.
Animal experts from Taipei Zoo and the Taipei County Government's Bureau of Agriculture examined the site on Friday and found a clear animal footprint.
Chang Chih-hua (張志華), chief veterinarian at Taipei Zoo's Animal Medical Center, told reporters yesterday that "the footprint belongs to a canine, not a feline, which means that the animal that attacked the sheep is likely a big dog."
Chang said that based on the tooth marks found on the carcasses, the animal has a wide mouth.
Referring to the witness' claim that the creature had roared at her, Chang said that tigers and leopards roar at human beings when they encounter them.
Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (
County officials said they hoped to catch the animal alive and were equipped with a cage, tranquillizer guns, blowpipes and flashlights.
At press time, the creature was still at large.
Residents nearby, meanwhile, were terrified.
A resident surnamed Huang told reporters the authorities had to find the animal or they would not venture outside their houses.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
RSS