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Everyone's got an opinion on photo of mysterious creature
6-10-04
By Mark Brumley, Staff Writer
News & Record
ASHEBORO -- Bill Kurdian is not alone.
Although he might be beginning to wish he were.
Since he shared his story and photograph last week of an unidentified fox-like creature he's seen sporadically since early winter in the backyard of his eastern Randolph County home, seven other people in Randolph, Guilford and Rockingham counties have come forward, claiming identical sightings.
Kurdian snapped his photo May 20 using a motion-sensing camera.
Lorraine Smith, a mammals curator at the N.C. Zoo in Asheboro, said she believes Kurdian's creature is a common grey fox that has lost much of its fur, possibly due to a heavy parasite infestation.
But not everyone is convinced.
"This thing has gotten real interesting," Kurdian said Wednesday.
"I've gotten calls from Washington, California and everywhere."
He's even been contacted by "Proof Positive," a new version of the old "Unsolved Mysteries" TV show, about possibly doing a segment.
The animal in Kurdian's photo looked so strange that some people asked if the photo had been altered.
They wondered if someone had electronically spliced a fox, a cat and deer together.
Kurdian said the only thing he's done to the original picture is had it enlarged so people could get a better look at the animal.
"The picture you see is exactly like it came off the camera," Kurdian said. "It has not been doctored. It's not a hoax."
Kurdian's photo has given birth to a foxy phenomenon that hasn't stayed caged in the Piedmont Triad area: It has grown legs and wandered North Carolina, the U.S. and the world via the Internet.
Between June 3, when the story first appeared on the News & Record's Web site, and Tuesday, the last day that figures were available, the story received 49,749 page views, or "hits."
Six people who read the story online sent e-mail to the News & Record and said they had seen similar creatures in Wilmington, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, New York and Oregon.
The frontrunner in the "Guess the Mystery Animal" game sparked by Kurdian's photo is the maned wolf, which is native to South America.
Coming in a close second is the jackal. There are three species, all native to Africa.
http://www.news-record.com/news/local/rand/creature_061004_hp.htm