A Single Male Cat’s Reign of Terror
In Australia, one cat seems to have destroyed an entire bird sanctuary.
After the victims were found dead—“decapitated” and “breasts opened”—the residents of a beachside community in Mandurah, Australia, took matters into their own hands. Five locals, along with Claire Greenwell, a biologist at Murdoch University, arranged an overnight stakeout. Another neighbor lent them a mobile home, so they could take turns sleeping at the scene. The target of all this drama? A cat.
Specifically, a cat who had taken to killing in Mandurah’s bird sanctuary. Mandurah had recently to attract a vulnerable and cartoonishly adorable native seabird called the fairy tern. Fairy terns don’t usually nest near people, but to , they did start having chicks in Mandurah. It was a success story—until it wasn’t.
