on wildlife

Animal sighting today that I never expected! I was coming back from picking up takeout, and as I was pulling into the driveway I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Glanced over, and sitting on top of the gate of our backyard fence, staring straight at me, was a bobcat - must have been 30 pounds (at a guess; it looked about three times the size of our ten-pound house cat.)(Indoor kitty, thank goodness!) and it stayed in place long enough for me to see that its black-tipped tail was longer than I expected. After a few seconds it jumped off into the backyard, then up and over the fence and into the row of trees dividing us from our neighbor.

I didn't quite have time to grab my phone to snap a pic...especially what with hyperventilating from excitement. I know bobcats are pretty common everywhere, but all growing up in rural New England I never caught a glimpse. Definitely never thought I'd see one here - we're in the suburbs, a more wooded neighborhood to be sure, and there are forested parks nearby, but there are houses or driveways on all sides here. One of our neighbors saw a coyote in the common drive earlier this summer, but no one's mentioned wildcats.

We've had a lot of (very tame though technically wild) bunnies around here, but haven't seen many in the past month or so...guess I know what's happened to them!

Now I can't stop peeking into the backyard, just checking...