Growing up we had an ancient holly tree in our garden. My dad used to tell me a leopard lived in its branches.  

‘Watch out for the leopard,’ he would say. ‘They love to eat dogs and little girls.’

 ‘Leopards don’t live in Scotland it’s too cold.’ I would protest.

And he always replied, ‘You never know with leopards.’

I knew there wasn’t a leopard, but with the sinking of the sun our garden would change its face, becoming a wilder place, one where leopards might just lay in wait. If I had to venture out there in the dark, perhaps to take the bins out, I would beg my dad to wait at the back door, then I would run through the garden, giving the holly tree a wide berth. I wasn’t sure how far a leopard could leap, but I wasn’t taking chances. My dad had a questionable sense of humour. While waiting for me by the back door, he would utter a deep, rasping sort of bark which he claimed was a leopard call. It sounded ridiculous, but as he had grown up in the foothills of Thunhisgala he knew what a leopard sounded like. When he was about six, not long before the family moved to Ireland a leopard started picking off their dogs, my grandmother loved the dogs, and she took to waiting on the porch with a borrowed gun. Eventually she managed to shoot the beast, and my grandfather, mighty impressed had the pelt preserved. My grandmother protested, feigning embarrassment but it was her who hung it on the wall, not wanting people to walk upon her trophy. 

They didn’t bring many things with them when they went to Ireland, but the leopards pelt was one of them. It hung above the range in the kitchen, incongruous to its rural Irish setting. When my grandfather died my grandmother moved to Scotland to help her sister run a hotel near the Turnhouse RAF base. The pelt came with and was hung in the snug where it was the subject of much interest, especially when folk found out my diminutive grandmother had shot the creature. 

In 1939 the pelt went missing. The 603 Squadron had been in the hotel snug, celebrating as they had downed the first Luftwaffe bomber over the British mainland. At some point the leopard skin had been removed from the wall to be worn as victory cape and the next day it was nowhere to be seen. My grandmother sent my dad down to the base to try and get it back, but nothing came of that.  

The following spring several leopard sightings were reported around the area. My grandmother followed the stories as she knew it had something to do with her leopard skin. One morning a secretary working for the ministry of war based at the Cammo Estate encountered the ‘leopard’, getting a good a look at the creature. Which turned out to be a large dog dressed in a leopard fur. So that was the end of that and apparently my grandmother’s leopard skin as it failed to reappear.

In 1971 my mum who had recently moved to Edinburgh won piloting lessons in a writing competition. She earned her licence and took a second job at the Edinburgh Air Centre, Turnhouse in order to keep flying as it was an expensive hobby. That Christmas they threw a masquerade fundraiser in aid of RAF veterans. My mum hadn’t the time to put together a costume, but one of the club members, Jim had come to her aid. He dug out an old leopard skin which he admitted he and his friends had stolen from a hotel during the war, he laughed as he remembered their trick of dressing the squadrons mascot in the pelt. He then draped the fur around her, declaring her an Egyptian priestess.

My dad had been at that party on a date, but when he saw a beauty dressed in a leopard skin, he had to speak to her. Of course, he had told her about the leopard which had eaten his dogs, how his mother had shot it and the furs subsequent theft from their hotel. At this point my mum had called Jim over.

That Sunday Jim had driven mum out to the hotel, where my grandmother was reunited with the leopard skin. It was returned to its spot on the wall in the snug, where it hung until the hotel burned down in 1979, the year I was born.

When dad died, he requested his ashes scattered in Sri Lanka, but civil unrest and covid made that impossible. So, my mum and I did the next best thing, we took him to the Zoo and emptied his urn into the leopard enclosure when no one was looking. The leopards didn’t seem to mind, they didn’t stir from their hiding places, and I wondered if they were even in the enclosure.

Yesterday I was out walking the dogs, we wandered through Holyrood and down into Meadowfield Park. It was warm, I swear the summers in Scotland often seem tropical now, I don’t remember them being this hot and humid when I was young. The dogs took off into the trees searching for squirrels and I followed them, enjoying the damp cool under the branches. As I walked along half buried in thought I almost stepped under boughs of a holly tree which I hadn’t spotted hidden amongst its neighbours. I stopped, smiled knowing up into the trees thick green branches then cut a wide berth around it, as you never know with leopards.

© Juliet Robinson 2025, all rights reserved