The Bobcat

On Thursday, April 9, as I was putting away groceries, I saw the groundhog come out of his hole under the shed behind the house. I kept glancing at him, and then he disappeared.

The groundhog, not yet under siege.

Then I saw this thing up against the shed. I thought, is that the groundhog? And I stopped what I was doing and peered out the window. 

That's some kind of cat, I thought. And it sat there and it sat there and I got my cell phone and tried to take a picture but of course it captured mostly screen in the window. So, I went out to the garage door where there are no screens, and I took a picture. I looked at the ears and I said aloud, "That is a bobcat! Oh damn, where is my camera?"

I raced into my office and got the camera off the charger, threw it on my tripod, and went back out into the garage. By then the cat had moved in front of the shed.

I tracked him, trying to zoom in and click. I really wanted to get him in full body because of the tail, so my husband couldn't say, "Oh, it was just somebody's house cat."

It was a magnificent looking animal, just sort of investigating the area. It looked in my flower cart that lies sideways so it doesn't trap the rain, and it went around a tree. 

Investigating the flower cart.

I thought I had lost it, but then its head poked around the oak. I got a great picture of that.

Hello there!

Then it came on out and I got a wonderful full body shot of it.

I was so excited I was yelling, "Siri, call James on speaker phone" and when he finally picked up - he was at the hospital with his mother - I yelled, "There's a bobcat in the backyard, it's down where the ash tree was now, it's heading toward Lanetta's, oh it's in the field, I can't see it anymore." 

And I sent him a picture and he was pretty excited, too.

That's the first time we've ever seen a bobcat here.