Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
It was the mother that I had seen, of course; the kittens had evidently stayed in the woods below me
and hadn't come into the field with their mother. Probably the reason why the cat looked so cross was
that she and the kittens had been temporarily separated, though they no doubt found each other soon
after. Incidentally, we got twenty-two inches of snow that day, making it my most memorable Thanks-
giving in more ways than one!
Our younger son also saw a bobcat, but under very different circumstances. As he was driving
through a wooded area, a bobcat raced out of the snow-covered evergreens into the path of the car ahead
of him. Dave immediately stopped to check on the cat, which was unfortunately dead. It was unmarked,
however, as it had apparently been struck in the head, but not run over. It was a beautiful specimen,
so Dave took it to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, where, the last I knew, it was preserved in
their freezer.
Then there was the very strange experience of an acquaintance, who lives on the fringe of Mont-
pelier, Vermont's capital city. He looked up from his yard work to see a doe walking down the street,
followed at a discreet distance by a fairly small bobcat! Why the bobcat was acting in that fashion is
something of a mystery. Certainly it wasn't about to attack a full-grown deer in warm weather. Quite
possibly it was a kitten, almost grown and just setting out on its own, either testing its stalking skills or
simply following the much larger animal out of sheer curiosity.
Both bobcat and lynx can be quite vocal at times, although they don't make a habit of it. The bobcat's
voice is often described as sounding very much like that of an oversized house cat, with loud yowling,
growling, hissing, and spitting. Certainly my only experience with a bobcat's voice reinforces that de-
scription.
One frosty autumn morning while I was in high school, I arose at first light to do a little hunting be-
fore school. I was crossing the field behind our house, when from the nearby woods came loud noises
that sounded for all the world like a solo version of a fight between house cats, only louder. Although
I suspected the source, I wasn't sure until a neighbor who was an old woodsman, hunter, and trapper
emerged from the woods.
I hurried over to him and asked, “Did you hear that noise? What was it?”
“Bobcat,” was his succinct reply.
Over the years, however, I've encountered a number of people who have recounted how frightened
they were, almost always at night, by “a bobcat's scream,” which they generally described as “blood-
curdling” and “sounding like a woman who's being murdered.” This simply doesn't seem to fit with
what's known about the bobcat's vocal repertoire: perhaps it's possible to interpret the sort of raowr-
aowraowraow yowls, such as fighting tomcats unleash on each other, as bloodcurdling screams, but
this seems a bit farfetched. The likeliest explanation is that the high-pitched scream uttered by none
other than our old friend the barred owl (see page 110) is frequently attributed to the bobcat.
Bobcat populations generally seem to be holding their own, and may even be increasing. Indeed, this
versatile feline is full of surprises: despite its generally reclusive nature, bobcats of late have been ad-
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