Pit bull is mauled - by Beast of Bolivia?

Residents in the Midway Road neighborhoods of Brunswick County are fearful the so-called Beast of Bolivia has returned to threaten their pets.

An unknown predator attacked a pit bull Tuesday afternoon at the residence of Shelby Sellers, who lives on Albright Road off Midway. Sellers returned home from work at the Brunswick County Government Center to find the family's 3-year-old pit bull mauled, with claw marks and wounds on its hindquarters and paws.

She rushed the dog, named Rosie, to a veterinarian's office in Supply.

"This had to happen during the day because the dog stays in the house at night," said Joey Brown, a family friend of Sellers and her 10-year-old daughter, Shana. The girl discovered the injured dog, shivering and bleeding, on the front porch of the house when she came home from Bolivia Elementary School.

"Rosie's back end was sliced, and so were (her) paws," Brown said, as if the animal had tried to fend off the attacker. As he spoke, Sellers was with the veterinarian tending to Rosie's wounds.

"She's going to make it," he said of the dog.

Brown said two puppies reported missing earlier by Sellers' neighbor were found dead Monday, apparently killed in an area behind the two houses on Albright Road.

In mid-September, three dogs were confirmed killed by an unknown predator in the area of Midway, Brown and Gilbert roads.

The county's Animal Services department investigated the predator's tracks, droppings and other clues but never conclusively determined what had attacked the dogs.

Speculation from animal owners, animal experts and the public has suggested a wayward panther or cougar, a larger-than-normal bobcat, a black bear or even a wolf because of paw tracks 3 inches across left at the scene of attacks.

No one has reported seeing the animal.

Many have suggested the predator came from the nearby Faircloth Zoo, which formerly had big cats - a lion and tiger - in its menagerie. But the zoo has been shuttered for more than 15 months and the animals were sent elsewhere, Animal Services Director Richard Cooper said in late October.

Animal Services staffers could not be reached late Tuesday about the latest reported attacks by the unknown predator.

Paul Jefferson 755-6307

paul.jefferson@starnewsonline.com