As a fulltime camper, I want to experience nature and her creatures. I’ve seen wild boar, deer, coyotes, armadillos, alligators, skunks, rabbits, lizards, snakes, owls, hawks, and many other birds and insects. But the big cat I saw yesterday shook me a little.
I was walking with my dog down a hill to some horse trails when I saw an animal walking around a bend below us. I thought it was an off-leash dog, and waited for its owner to emerge. That didn’t happen. I looked closer and realized it was a large, striped wild cat carrying a dead rabbit. I fumbled for my iPhone to get a picture. It saw us and started trotting away along the horse trail. From the other direction a couple approached with two dogs. The cat looked at them, looked back at me, then darted into the brush.
The couple and I stopped to compare notes. They thought it was a coyote. I was sure it was a cat. The told me they had seen a cougar (mountain lion) six months ago in this area.
I continued along the trail, passing the spot where the creature darted. Since I discovered this nature preserve a few weeks ago, just a few miles from where The Tiny is set up on a family member’s horse property, I walk this portion of the trail everyday. And so it seemed natural to continue, moving further and further into the wilderness. But shortly I got the feeling that I needed to get back to people, to the picnic and the horse staging areas. I turned back. A few minutes later, there was the cat.
I’d seen a bobcat in Yosemite, and it was much lower to the ground. This cat had long legs. It was walking right toward us, looking at us, but not in a menacing way. Still, it didn’t seem at all scared. I decided to change that and started yelling and swinging my defensive walking stick through the air. The cat leapt back into the brush. Passing that spot, the hairs stood up on my neck and my body tingled. I swung and yelled and also got my pepper spray ready. I’m really not much of a wild animal whisperer and just want to be alive a bit longer. We made it back unscathed.
I decided I wouldn’t go there again in the early morning (7 a.m.), which I had started doing to beat the record-breaking heat we’ve been suffering through. A few days ago, the thermometer reached 117 degrees. I never had these sightings when I previously went there daily at 10 a.m. But now, by that time of the day, the temperature would be over 100 degrees. I thought I’d best walk around the neighborhood of the property were I’m staying to get my morning exercise. However, when dawn broke this morning, I couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on the nature preserve. I decided I’d go there, but stick to the picnic and horse staging area.
A few minutes into my walk, just feet from where some volunteers had been clearing brush yesterday in the educational area, there was the cat again, spotting us and darting into the brush.
I decided to get out of there. I’m currently trying to decide on my next campground and when to make the move, and I’m wondering if this is a message from the universe that it’s time to go. Hiking up the hill to my car, I saw a man on a horse. As he passed I asked him if there are bobcats in this area, and he said yes, lots of them. I then asked about mountain lions. He thought no, but then he mentioned that he saw a big striped cat today running across the trail. I asked him if he thought it was a bobcat. He said no and added: “It was huge.”
Back at my car, I realized I was close to where the park rangers have their office. I drove out and spoke with a young ranger. I told him what I saw and asked if there were mountain lions around here. He said: “I don’t want to say there are no cougars here. But there are next to no cougars here.” He said that all or nearly all the cougars who pass through are collared and so the GPS-type devices they are wearing alert the rangers of their whereabouts. In his opinion, the big cat was an extremely tall bobcat. He said they tend to be pretty robust in this park. I asked if bobcats would be dangerous for me and my dog. He said coyotes are the big danger, and he recalled watching a woman with two small off-leash “yapper” dogs walking down a hill across from the ranger station and he could see in the tall grasses two lines of coyotes moving in on the dogs, and he called for the woman to pick them up. It’s true that my dog looks like a wolf and is bigger than the average coyote, but when you get 5 or 6 coyotes together, that’s a different fight.
At this point, I am going to assume the cat I’ve been seeing is a tall bobcat. But why it’s been so visible to me and the horse rider is the mystery. As I ponder my travels and my next destination, these sightings almost seem like part of the puzzle. It’s time. I hear the road calling.