This was in my e-mail this morning from LifeMinder's, News of the Weird.

"Opponents of a planned prison near Kaikohe, New Zealand, petitioned the High Court to halt construction because officials had not considered the environmental impact of "taniwha" (folkloric monsters in the area)."

Anybody know what the "taniwha" is supposed to be??

What's the URL for the whole article? Pretty cool!

Well I never could locate a url for the entire article. But looking up the Taniwha online this is what I found...
"Taniwha"
"These are the dragons of the Polynesians. Some are water-dwelling, some are not. Some burrow in the sand to hide themselves, some live in caves... there is a great variety among taniwha. Their common trait is they are all enormous lizards."

It was very disappointing to say the least. I was thinking I had found something related to hominid creatures.
Once I found out they were lizards, or more commonly reffered to as dragons, I tried to get into Network54 to delete the post before anyone got excited about it, but the network was temporarily down. I was actually coming here now to remove it when I saw you posted! LOL

Oh well, I learned something new anyway...LOL

...what a Wampus Cat is?

If you're country, you'll probably kick me in the cyber butt just for asking silly questions.

You got me on that one Fishbone...aside from The Wampus Cats being the name for the school's athletic teams in Conway Arkansas.
Wompus means "opossum" (I think) but what does wompus cat mean?

I had vaguely heard of it, but according to what I recall Rob Prevo saying, it's a folkloric "black panther" in Arkansas and the southern US.

Rob is a cryptozoology researcher whose main interest is unknown cats. His web site is

www.geocities.com/felidology/home.html

He's a good friend and is known as the "Cat Man". You can go to his web site and post your question on his forum or E-mail him from there. He will most certainly know everything you want.

I guess it very well could be a black panther (or any other big cat for that matter).

All I know is that when I asked this one old man what one was after he'd warned me about them, he just laughed til I thought he'd fall out of his chair and then he told me it was like a booger or a haint.

I'd heard the term before but I'd always just assumed it was a bad-*ss bobcat or something similar.

Wonder if it could be a jaguarundi?