Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty

Let me start by saying that I miss all the cool things!  Late this morning I get an email from Ross sent from his iPod touch that read, "omg. just saw a bobcat."  Now a bobcat would not be an abnormal sight here in Connecticut, but it would be a first for both of us.

Making sure all was okay, I gave Ross a call and learned that he had been out herding the chickens while they free ranged for a bit when he saw the big cat.  He was a bit nervous because it was no more than 100 feet away from him.  I included this picture because the big cat was just on the other side of the hammock while Ross was standing about where the picture was taken.  Our phone call was short and sweet as I got back to work.

I got the whole story when Ross came to bring me lunch.  He told me that he was watching the chickens and then looked over and saw what he thought was a dog is in our backyard.  This is a concern when you have unprotected chickens because dogs can easily kill them.  The creature then looked at him and his first thought was "kitty."  His next thought was "BIG kitty."  His final thought was "BIG KITTY!"  It was at this point that he started flailing around the gett'n stick and telling the big cat to go away.  Thank God it did.  Now anyone who knows Ross knows that he loves cats, so I can only imagine that he must have cracked a momentary grin between his "kitty" and "BIG kitty" thoughts.

The next thing Ross told me is what really makes this story interesting.  He said that he was mistaken, and it wasn't a bobcat that he saw but a cougar (aka mountain lion, panther or puma).  Now this is a bit of a problem here in Connecticut because the official stance of the State's Department of Environmental Protection has been that cougars are not found in Connecticut and haven't been for over a century.  Cougar sightings in the state have been classified as either a mistaken identity of some other animal or someone's pet cougar gone astray.  Essentially, as my Internet research has led me to believe, the difference between Ross seeing a bobcat and a cougar in Connecticut is the same difference between someone seeing an airplane and a UFO.  I was even able to find a conspiracy theory online; the person said the state introduced the cougars back into the wild to control the deer population but did not want to notify the public because of the danger cougar's pose.  Going forward we will refer to this as the cougar on the grassy knoll theory.

Now what makes Ross' sighting even more interesting is that our elderly neighbor, who had the bear in her apple trees, has on several occasions told our next door neighbor that she has spotted a cougar in her yard.  He thought she was just being crazy.  Guess not.  Now I'm on a quest to get a picture of the cougar so that I can prove the big cats are back!  As an aside, when I got home from work Ross' big, bowie knife was sitting on the kitchen counter.  He had been wearing it this afternoon when he let the chickens out for some more free time.  I guess he thought he'd get all Grizzly Adams on the cougar if it decided to come back for a tasty chicken treat. Grrrrrr!

Here is another person's blog about cougars here in the Litchfield Hills. http://www.damnedct.com/mountain-lions-litchfield-hills/