About That Baby Bobcat

I think in another epoch, I'd have been sitting around a fire, telling stories. I'd keep all those cavepeople coming back night after night for a nice installment of How I Outsmarted the Cave Bear and Lived to Tell the Tale. I'd earn my piece of roast beast, giving them something to think about, a nice bedtime story.

It's taken me awhile to get to a place from which I can write this post. I have had a lot to process and come to terms with. But I'm finally there. The thing about blogging is, if you start telling a good story before you know how it ends, you can be in for a surprise, and not necessarily a nice one, and then you've got to figure out how to convey that to many thousands of people. This is why I sometimes wind up not blogging about some of the best things, because I don't want to have everyone fall in love with some creature, and then be crushed when things don't end so well. For instance, I've raised three beautiful brown thrashers to from Day 9 to release this summer, but I didn't blog them, first because, feeding them every half-hour, then every hour, I didn't have time to, and second because I was afraid they might not all make it. Because you just never know with young things. You're raising them using an artificial diet in artificial surrounds, and who knows? Maybe you get that diet wrong, and they don't do well. I'm happy to say that the thrashers are healthy and sleek and strong and have been free for over a week and are lighting up our lives, hanging around the yard, still swooping in for handouts. So maybe you'll see them here before too long. Or maybe the world will just keep sweeping me along with new things to write about, and I'll save them for the next book.

So I went on a 7.6 mile run/lope down Dean's Fork today, and it was all so beautiful and wild and heartening that I was finally OK with having to tell you that the bobkitten I took in will not be coming back to Indigo Hill for release. It is a strange story, and there's more to it than just OOH and AHH. The minute I had that cat in my care, I went into a 36-hour panic attack about the possibility that it might be euthanized. I was so afraid that if I went through the proper channels and contacted my county wildlife officer, who would then have to contact the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, that some kind of ruling would come down from the state of Ohio that the kitten would be taken from me and put down. My fear may seem irrational, but it was very, very real to me, and I grappled with it, pacing in circles as I made phone calls trying to figure out the right thing to do for Bobkit. At the same time, I knew I had to go through the proper official channels for this state threatened species, so I steeled myself and made the call. To my immense relief, my kind county wildlife officer showed up the next morning to pick up the kitten, then transfer him to an intern who would drive him to a regional ODNR office, from which he'd then be taken to Ohio's only qualified bobcat rehabilitator in Lake County, up near Cleveland. I could hardly believe it was true, that Bobkit would have a chance to grow up and be returned to the wild. I was so thrilled that everything seemed to be going OK. I told myself that my fear was irrational; that the state would do right by this animal and the people who'd found it and cared for it.

I went off to Iowa with my kids, and after we returned I got a phone call from a District Manager of ODNR in my area. He was very kind and very sorry to have to tell me that my worst fears had been realized. The bobkitten had, in fact, been put down. It seems he was taken to another district office prior to being taken to the rehabilitator, and while he was there lots of people were looking at him, and one employee wanted to take his photo, but didn't want a dead mouse in the picture. Which I had given him so he'd have a meal for the road. He loved those little mousies, and he had a very small tank, and it would be at least five hours before he got to his next meal. So I sent a mouse for the road.  She opened his carrier and reached in to move the mouse, and the bobkitten took exception to that. He lunged and grabbed her hand and he would not let go, because he was a wild bobcat, and he thought she was taking away his food. And nobody should get anywhere near a wild bobcat with bare hands, because bobcats are like honey badgers, whether they're adorable and tiny or big and brawny. They're tough animals. Bobkit was just doing what comes naturally.

Because there was a remote possibility that the kitten could be rabid, the difficult decision was made to euthanize him for testing. The only way you can test for rabies is to look at brain tissue. Enough said. The would-be photographer felt horrible about this, and offered to wait out a 28-day quarantine, but by then, if the kittten were rabid, she could be dead. She was overruled.

It was just a rotten thing all the way around, and I'm sure nobody felt and continues to feel worse about it than that poor woman with the bitten hand. After I got over my initial shock and anguish, I realized that that could well have been me with the horrible dilemma and the holes in my hand. After all, hadn't I made a little video of him, chewing up his mouse? Yes, I had. I'd had gloves on when I laid the mouse in his carrier, but once he latched onto it and was happily chewing, I had to take my glove off to work my iPhone. I had to make a video, because it was so amazing to see this little thing, and I wanted to share it with you. So who am I to judge her? Nobody, that's who. It could so easily have happened to me.

I cried for most of the rest of that day that I got the call, and still felt like I'd been hit by a truck the next morning. I had to tell this story to the kind people who'd rescued the kitten in the first place, and they were a worse mess than I was. I had to tell Bill and the kids and Shila, too. We'd all gotten so wrapped up in thinking we had saved him from certain death, only to unwittingly send him to another certain death. Call my day of panic a premonition...I was a nervous wreck from the moment I laid eyes on that bobkit until Officer Bear's truck disappeared down the driveway. I was so sure something would go wrong. I was right. There were just too many people in the mix.

But rabies, you can't fool around with. And a human life is more precious than a bobcat life, and that's the truth. For me, it dredged up what happened with my beloved big brown bat Darryl from the winter of 2010, who innocently spluttered while Liam and I were feeding him. And because a droplet of his saliva had landed on Liam's cheek, and maybe microdrops had landed on his lip, that constituted a possible exposure. No way around it: Darryl had to be euthanized for testing. (He tested negative for rabies, but still). And it was terrible. And that was a story that I had to tell, too. I started the windup with this post, and then told the whole awful thing in this post. Trust me, those were no fun to write. Neither is this.

I now wear a plastic face shield whenever I handle bats, no matter what. Thanks, Dr. Starship. And of course, I wore gloves to handle the bobkit, but still. If he'd wanted to nail me while I was filming him, he could have.

I'm sorry to have to tell you this, sorry I started a story that I couldn't finish well. But a baby bobcat in a plastic pet carrier was just too much---I had to show him to you. And I decided, firmly, upon learning that he was gone, that I wouldn't--couldn't--tell you that. You were too in love with him, and I didn't want to crush you. I didn't want to have to write this.

 But I had a change of heart on June 24, a bright summer day with high puffy clouds and birds singing everywhere.

To reward myself for finishing my book read, I went for a 7.6 mile run/lope/amble down Dean's Fork that day.

 Halfway down the road, I found these dead-fresh tracks in fine mud. Rear paw, 2 1/8" from top to heel, on the left. Front paw, 2 1/4" top to heel, on right. Adult bobcat, a nice sized one too. That's the second set of bobcat tracks I've found in the same stretch of puddles.

In this close-up you can see the perfect roundness of the pugmarks, the lack of any nail imprint; the grainy texture of the pads and even the fur that grows in between them. Beautiful. Life-affirming. Just here, just now.

I started thinking then about telling you what really happened.  I knew you'd ask, and I didn't know what I'd say. "No news?" "Haven't heard?" 

How long could I hold you all off? Would you forget about that bobkit? No way. You'd be asking along about late summer.

You're going to get the truth out of me here. You always have, even if it's painful.

As I loped along, there was a sound like someone was throwing handfuls of millet in the weeds along the road. It was extraordinary. I stopped and looked and found that the common plantain was riddled with holes made by flea beetles, and it was the beetles leaping on spring-loaded legs from the plantain leaves that made the millet spray sound.

And I thought, isn't that remarkable, that this plant is getting devoured, and that there are enough flea beetles to make noticeable noise all the way down the road! I'm sure it sucks for the plantain, but it was pretty cool for me.

Life is beautiful, even when it sucks.

Dean's Fork teaches me that. I saw so many incredible things this day--baby birds everywhere, learning how to forage--and I just drank it all in, and I felt so good, knowing that there are these wild places all around where things like this go on whether we're there to notice them or not.

I got all the way down to the end of Dean's Fork, and I was almost four miles from home. A rose-breasted grosbeak sang over a cerulean warbler, also singing. Breeding, both of them, north meets south. Fantastic. 

And I looked down and was reading the silt for more tracks when I found this one.

Bobcat. Another bobcat! But wait--only three toes on the foot?? No. There was a little green pebble sticking up, and that pebble was enough to keep the cat's inner toe from hitting the ground. 

Which along with the small size of the track, told me that this was a lighter-weight, smallish animal. I found a nice double set about a foot away, from the same series. Measured, the track was 1 3/4" from top to bottom. Too large for a housecat, which would be 1 1/8" top to bottom. 

Smallish female, maybe, or maybe a baby bobcat. 

And I realized, gazing at this track set, a smile spreading across my face, that I need to take a longer view on this tragic tale of a rescue gone wrong. And that long view is that there are lots of bobcats in Ohio now, probably more bobcats than have been here since pre-colonial times. Because there is lots more forest than there's been since then. The forest has come back, and people aren't persecuting bobcats any more, so they've come back too.

I've said it before: Wildlife rehabilitation is for people. The odd bobcat or brown thrasher that we manage to save; the fawn we bottle-raise; the squirrel we scoop up mean virtually nothing on a population level. Unless you're talking about saving the life of one of the world's 603 (as of February 2015) whooping cranes,  and putting it back into the breeding population, you really aren't making an impact one way or the other on these more abundant species by saving one here and there.

You are making an impact on the life of that one animal, on your life, and the lives of the people who get involved in helping it make it back to the wild. When you tell its story, you get people involved and caring. And we very much need to care about other life forms, to empathize and show them mercy and kindness. That's what makes us human, and that's what elevates us from animal, vegetable or mineral--that ability to give a hoot about some poor helpless creature, to stop what we're doing and try to help it.

The bigger story here is that there are enough bobcats that we're starting to see them hit on the highways (saw my first just north of Exit 6 on I-77 near Marietta this spring!). This may sound odd, but I was happy and excited to see that, because it means there are enough bobcats around for that to happen.

There are enough bobcats around that I found tracks from two different animals, one likely a juvenile, on Dean's Fork in one morning. And as the raincrow flies, that's a couple miles from my house.

There are enough bobcats around that a juvenile left a poo in my driveway for me to find as I returned from that same walk that same morning. So make that fresh stanky sign from a third bobcat in the same morning!

Perhaps it was the child of this beautiful female who immortalized herself at the same spot in our driveway on July 8, 2014.

photo by Corey Husic's Bushnell Trailcam.

They walk among us, on midsummer mornings. 

There are enough bobcats around that a kitten ended up stuck in a drainpipe in my friends' yard. 

There are enough bobcats around that he found his way to my loving, gloved hands. 

And for that I am deeply thankful. 

Hodge is one of my dearest friends. She has two wonderful housecats, Java and Star. So Hodge was among the first I sent a photo to when I came by the bobkitten. And she was among the first I told when I learned he wouldn't be returning to Indigo Hill to grace our woods.

Here's what she wrote back to me. 

Oh oh oh oh.  Oh, why, oh why?

Okay. Don't go there.  The whys are useless in this case.  

By which I mean, please release all notions out of your conscience that your putting that mouse for the road in the carrier was how this happened.  Not Your Fault, no way.  

You gave him three square meals and a safe place to land.  You made him purr.  You own that forever.  Somewhere in bobcat heaven there's a kit who knew there was a you, and that's a good thing.  

Feeding the Bobcat

I was getting so many busted owls and hawks last winter--just giving them a way-station and transfer to the Ohio Wildlife Center via my Owl Angel Lee H. , that I asked my neighbors Sherm and Beth to save me their mice when they snap-trapped them. I got a nice fat bag of about ten frozen organic free-range white-footed mice. Yahoo! Plopped 'em in the freezer right next to the lima beans for the next raptor emergency. As soon as I got the call, I took one out to thaw.

It had occurred to me that Bobkit might appreciate some natural food, and his digestive system would likely need a tuneup after a couple of days of canned cat food. Mouse organ meat, fur and bones: just the ticket.

Speaking of galvanized: Bobkit sez GIMME THAT THING. NOW. This I know how to eat.

Mama brought us these and sometimes I didn't get one. 

His wild thing came out to growl and play. Ahh, the blue eyes, still hazy and uncertain in sight. The rows of sapsucker holes on his forelegs. The dot dash and scrawl on his forehead. The eyeliner. 

I forgot to mention his fur texture in the last post. It felt like shearling--incredibly thick and lush, nothing like a housecat's. Wool, really. Amazing.

After nibbling on its toes, he started chewing in earnest at the mouse's head. There was a mighty crunch and crack. The power evident in his teeth and jaws gave me pause. He simply pulverized that mouse, head to tail.

You'll just have to watch him in action. This is likely as close as most of y'all are ever going to get to a bobkitten. Until that day, I never figured I'd see, much less touch, a baby bobcat.

Life has been throwing so many roses at my feet lately. Fast and furious, and I'm fielding them as fast as I can. The trick is to slow down enough to gather them up and know when the really cool stuff is happening. And then, of course, to give them away. Roses on your pillow:

The next morning, I had to take Bill to work (car trouble). And to reprovision the house. I left early, around 7, and was back by 9 AM. I figured Eric Bear would call me to let me know where the kitten was going after 9. Wrong. He was sitting in his black truck right in my driveway when I got home, ready to take the bobkit to his foster home. Not fooling around.

A rehabilitator in Lake County had agreed to take our adorable little charge. A big outdoor acclimation pen, the right foods...it's not a trivial thing, raising a bobkitten up to be a bobcat, and keeping the wild in him in the process. I wouldn't pretend to know all that's involved. But I felt incredibly privileged to have housed, fed and touched him, to have gazed into those unfocused blue eyes and told him everything was going to be OK.  To have felt a bobcat's purr.

I gave him a mouse for the road. Fare well, little beautiful thing. You already look better, just for a night and three good meals. 

Thank you to my friends for doing the right thing for this sweet creature, and to Washington County Wildlife Officer Eric Bear for seeing him off to the right home. My heros.

Best part: If all goes well, he may come back to Indigo Hill for release. Wouldn't that be nice? Bobcat release party! A spotted streak, disappearing into the woods. Cross your fingers.

To Touch a Baby Bobcat

I have so many fond memories of my dad, and one of my favorites is his saying, out of nowhere, 

"I've always thought a bobcat would make a nice pet. Get him young, tame him down, that'd be a real nice pet."

He'd usually go on, "I don't have much use for housecats, but a bobcat seems like a real nice animal."

Well. 

As to the "getting him young" part, this'n my friends, who know cats very well, figured at about five weeks old, straight from the woods to their drainpipe. He had all his teeth.

He was rawther well armed. 

In nail and in tooth. That little sucker was absolutely gnawing on the gauntlets. Young as he was, he knew he was wild, and did not appreciate being handled for the transfer from bed to feeding carrier.

My friend gently installed him in the feeding carrier and I offered fresh minced raw chicken breast, which I thought would be better for him than cat food. The wildlife rehabilitator I had spoken to had recommended stew beef, but I didn't have any on hand. The chicken had been bought that day, and I rinsed it too, knowing that chicken can carry a good bacterial load.

The bobkitten heartily approved of the diet change. My friends chuckled at his avid acceptance of the birdy offering. "He likes your cooking better!"

The first thing Eric Bear, our Washington County Wildlife Officer, asked when I phoned was, "Are you sure it's a bobcat? Does it have the white spots on back of its ears?"  (He don't know me vewwy well, do he?)

White spots: Check. Leetle bitty tufts, too.

Officer Bear wanted me, as a Category II wildlife rehabilitator, to take the kitten so all would be legal until he could get in touch with ODNR in Columbus, which would match the kitten with someone who knew how to care for bobcats, and had the facilities to return them to the wild.

Oh, well, if I must...He'd spend Sunday night in my care, and with luck we'd have a rehabilitator lined up sometime Monday morning.

Category II means I've had my rabies shots and taken a course on handling rabies vector species, so theoretically I'm equipped to do this. Totally feeling my way. Who gets a baby bobcat, after all?

As long as we had to handle him, we decided to see to some of the hideous burrs matting his fur. We wondered how long he'd been without the care of his mother. I could feel every bone, every bump of his little spine. Looked like a male, which is hard to tell from this blurry shot, but please note teeny tiny stump tail and giant hindclaws. 

My friend held him firmly and I went to work on the burrs, picking them out of his fur as quickly as I could. My fingers moved up and down his tiny body, and as I worked him over, I felt him relax and go still. Twice, I heard a rumble that was not a growl. Like the chicken dinner, this made sense to him. I envisioned his lost mama holding him down, pulling out burrs with her teeth, and I imagined he did too.

He was purring.

I was so disarmed by that, by feeling him respond to kindness and what felt familiar to him. No matter how wild, all young things need to know they're loved.

All right, DOD. You may have a point. Every cell in my body was wanting to hold him up under my chin and rock him to sleep. But wild things must stay wild, and this dear little creature would be no exception. Later that night I'd creep up and peek through the vents in the carrier to see him stretched out luxuriously on his side, belly round, one arm flung out, cuddled into his pile of soft towels. It was a sight to do my heart good. 

Next: Wild thing, wild food!

Baby Bobcat!

This summer has been neither easy or lazy, but it sure has been interesting. 

I have noticed a shift in the kind of pleas for help I get over the phone all day long. 

Since the Ohio Division of Natural Resources has listed wildlife rehabilitators by county on its website, I've gotten a different kind of caller. More resourceful, more informed, more invested in the animal or bird they've found. What I used to get was, "I found a ______. When can you come pick it up?"

I'd have to explain that I don't run a bird ambulance, that I'm not paid by the state to do this, but that I'd try to help given these limitations. 

Now I get people who seem willing to take  personal responsibility for their find, who will work with me to find a solution. It's a whole different cut of caller.  I think it's related to the fact that the pool of callers, rather than being just those who've called a veterinarian or wildlife officer or ODNR, is now composed of people who are resourceful enough to look for a rehabilitator themselves, online.

Whatever the reason, I'm getting some interesting calls. 

This one came in the evening, from friends who live about 6 miles from our place. 

"Julie, I know you are more of a bird person, but I wonder if you can help us with a little problem." 

"We have a bobcat kitten here and we don't know what to do with it."

Yow. Holy cow. The cellphone photos started rolling in. I never doubted my friends as to the ID, but seeing it was a whole 'nother thing. They told me that they'd heard it yowling from a drainpipe outside their garage. They figured it was a housecat that had gotten stuck in there, and were making plans to get it out when it suddenly appeared in the yard, not stuck at all, but hiding. It had a bob tail, wild spots and all,  and it was still calling for its mama. Rrrow. Rrrow. Rrrow. A hoarse, low-pitched snarly call, nothing like a housecat's, unless it were very large or very angry.

Knowing that its mother should be nearby and hearing it, they allowed it to wander around the yard, and it spent a day and a night in the woods alone. 

Its mother never came for it. 

The next day, my friends saw it walking on their road, still alone. They knew it was time to intervene.

Whatever happened to its mother--whether she was shot, trapped, hit by a car or killed by dogs, they were sure she couldn't get to her baby. My friends took the bobkit in and offered it soft canned cat food and water. It was clearly on the verge of starving.

Luckily, it had all its teeth and a powerful will to survive. It tucked into the food without hesitation. 

It was so hungry and messy as it ate that they removed the soft towels from its carrier.  Easier to clean. 

Please note tiny tufts on eartips, not to mention the wild facepaint.

That evening, they called me. 

I was galvanized into action. I didn't know much about bobcats, but I knew there was likely to be a protocol for dealing with them. I did a little rooting around online, found an old news item and called a wildlife rehabilitator near Cincinnati who apparently deals with bobcats. I called and left a message and got a quick call back. She informed me that, while she has a permit to keep a bobcat as an education animal, she's not licensed to rehabilitate them. She told me that I'd have to call my county wildlife officer first, and that he'd help me place the animal. 

It was, of course, a Sunday night. But Washington County Wildlife Officer Eric Bear picked up his phone. I was very glad to hear a live voice. The first thing he told me to do was put it back out in the woods near where it was found. I assured him my friends had covered that step admirably. 

Even though the kitten was so small, the responsibility to do right by it felt very big to me. I still couldn't believe I was about to see, and perhaps touch, this phantom of the woods. Just to house it for a little while would be a privilege.

Next: What to do with a baby bobcat?