I know, I know, it’s a horrible picture. But an exciting find nonetheless. I’d left my trail camera set up in our woods along a deer trail between our house and cabin for the last month. It’s always a bit like Christmas every time we hook the camera up to the TV after a long stint in the woods. This time, I’d left it in place for a month. With Bridget and the boys gathered around the 42-inch LG, this is how the conversation went, “Deer, deer, deer, porcupine, deer, deer butt, deer butt, …wait!..What is that?…Is that a Bobcat?…Look at the white spots on the ears…IT IS A BOBCAT!” It is the first documented Bobcat on our little five acres (I thought I heard one years ago).

The time stamp said “September 15, 2011…8:57am” In broad daylight too! We do have many Cottontails around so maybe it was hunting them…Or just a young cat wandering in search of new territory. The camera does not do well in dappled sunlit woods…underexposes images terribly…like this one. The image quality would have been much better if it had been heavy overcast or even in the middle of the night!

Here is my “bestest and mostest favorite” Bobcat image. It was taken down in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in April of 2006. The wind was blowing so hard and rustling the dried and dead palm fronds, that it never even heard me. In fact, it came down the same path I was on and when it was within about ten feet of me, I flinched and it fled into the jungle! Very cool animals.