The Chinese new year will be of the dragon. A visit to the Uffington horse in south Oxford shire was remarkable. Myself and a documentary maker visited the site as it was mainly his interest and idea that the so called horse was not a horse, I must admit, it had passed my mind many years ago, but I did not dwell on it, but whilst being involved in the making the documentary on big cats in Britain, I not only liked the idea, but became hooked on the possibility of the depiction actually meaning to represent a different animal:that animal more likely being a cat. It has all the dimensions of a large cat such as a leopard. I think it possible that given the fact that the hill side figure etched in the chalk substrate is more than 3000 years old, it could well have depicted the animal which may have lived on for much longer than previously thought. Science is very often wrong, and changes its tune. The lynx was thought to have been extinct by a certain time only for remains to have been dated many hundreds of years later. There is actually no logical reason for the leopard to have vanished from the UK about ten thousand years ago, other than man killing it out of existence, but there is no historic records of it living alongside the early people, or at least none that we recognize. so perhaps this is it?
The dimensions of the animal such as the higher rear end, long tail,muscular neck certainly fit a feline animal.The two protrusions from under its jaw may suggest fangs or at least whiskers!
This is a view from the upright ear looking down its oblong shaped head and one can see the whiskers or teeth protruding . The round central object is the eye. The landscape is peculiar and ancient.Dragon hill is underneath it.
On the line of its neck, was a mole hole.One rarely sees the actual tunnels of this animal.There was a chamber before it and when the spoil heap or mole hill was removed, the tunnel was exposed.
Red kites were all around the site and at the fiery sunset, many came to roost in nearby trees .They seemed to carry an essence of the dragon, especially with their serpentine tongue like tails and their red colours.