I am with you 4est Trekker, I had an experience with a BIG panther, when I was about 13or 14 yrs. old, we had camped by a swamp pond, with lots of saw grass around it, and one of my Buddies, from town, said hey look at that big dog, and we all turned, and just then the fire wood we had put on the fire, flared up, and it was the biggest panther I had ever seen in the wild! Well it turned, and leaped into a big palmetto patch, and never made a sound. We built the fire into a bonfire, and after awhile, got brave, or stupid, and took, torches, and our .22's, and went to look, and it was gone, just BIG tracks. I also was going home one night, with my dog, and I was going through, a section of woods, that had been semi developed, with dirt roads, laid out, but no homes, or lots cleared. It was near a friend of mine who's Dad raised hogs. Some were quite nasty, and occasionally got out. Well it was a nice moonlit night, and all of a sudden there was a big commotion in a big patch of palmettos, and a lot of grunting, well, I went up a pine tree, and my dog went to parts unknown. I guess he figured that if I was getting out of Dodge, he might as well also. It had gotten a little dark due to some cloud cover, and once the moon was free of the cover, I could see something in the road, and then saw it just a herd of armadillos! I had to laugh at myself, I thought sure, I was about to be hog feed! I called the dog, and we went on home. I come close to chewing a hole in my seat that night!
Wayne