The Bobcat

I know this looks like a monkey in this picture, but it's really a bobcat. It was lurking around the property hunting for rabbits. Jimmy saw it earlier chasing one. When I saw it, it was just loping along, coming up from the pond.

The birds in the trees were going crazy! Even if you couldn't see the bobcat, you would be able to track its progress by the birds. First in that group of trees down by the pond, then another group would start up in the tree over by the driveway, followed a few seconds later by the birds in the trees out by the old garden.

I saw that my pool towels were still hanging on the line and it was starting to get dark. When it gets dark, the dew falls and the towels get damp. I wanted to go out and get them, but I wasn't about to walk out into the yard with the thought of a bobcat somewhere near. We have lots and lots of little bunnies jumping around out there (and lots and lots of bushes for him to hide in) and he looked hungry!

To my knowledge, this is the first bobcat we've seen in the 32 years we've been here. We didn't see the cougar (or whatever it was) either, but we saw it's huge paw prints in the snow where it was chasing a rabbit a couple of years ago. We could tell it was chasing a rabbit because the rabbit prints were in the middle and the large paw prints were on either side and there was a long zig-zag of prints all over the snow covered lawn. Jimmy made a plaster cast of the print.