A Florida train engineer found out the hard way that cats are more afraid of water than they are thousands of tons of metal loaded with raw cane sugar when a US Sugar Corporation train struck and killed a panther on a trestle in Glades County west of Miami last week, the Miami Herald reports.
“[The panther] could have jumped into the water. He did not,” said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission official Ryan Sheets, adding that the engineer tried to brake before hitting the 2.5 year old male. It’s not clear if there was an alligator or Burmese python in the water and the panther decided the train was the less bad and much quicker of his two very bad options.