I Am not a Pixie-bob! I Am a Wild Cat!

A yummy rat makes travel time go by more quickly.  Our neighbor
wildlife rehabbers like to put stuffed toys with small mammals for companionship.

Some where in southeastern Colorado, someone "found" a bobcat kitten in an abandoned house out on the prairie. (In other words, the kitten was probably part of a litter, with a mother, but was snatched.)

The "finder" took her back to town, where she was kept as a pet and described to everyone as a "pixie-bob."

I never heard of a "pixie-bob" before this week. Apparently it's a bobtailed domestic cat breed that (allegedly) has some bobcat genetics, but don't waste your money on a DNA test.

Someone tipped off a Colorado Parks and Wildlife district wildlife manager. Keeping wild mammals as pets is totally illegal, unless you're a rehabilitator or a licensed zoo, etc. Since her mother's location was unknown, a wildlife rehabilitation center was the only place for her.

M. and I, the volunteer wildlife transporters, met him partway between here and there and picked her up in a busy big-box store parking lot. Is there anything more dissonant than handling a wild animal amid acres of asphalt, rumbing motors, truck traffic on the interstate highway, the smell of fast-food restaurant grease, and a hot summer wind?

Back in the foothills of home, we left her with the rehabbers for a short stay. They had raised three bobcat kittens over this past winter — those three were released earlier this summer.

But one kitten is a lonely kitten. A rehabber in Douglas County already had two kittens and was happy to take a third.

By now we were calling this one "Pixie-bob," and she had been happily eating elk and chicken bits in a Tuff Shed-turned nursery, but it was time for her (wriggling wildly) to go back into the blue carrier and travel more than an hour northward. She got a freshly thawed rat to occupy her on the trip; when I cleaned the carrier afterwards, nothing was left but a short section of the tail. Crunch crunch!

With any luck, this will be her next May or June:

Bobcat release (Colorado Parks and Wildlife).

An Orphan Fawn with Pretty Good Prospects

Orphan mule deer fawn arrives at the rehabilitation center.

This is the time of year when fawns are dropping and wildlife agencies are telling people, "Don't think that fawn has been abandoned unless it is still there 24 hours from now! Its mother had to go eat, but she knows where she left it, and she will be coming back."

Generally that is true, unless she is lying dead by the side of the highway, which is the back-story to some of the wildlife transport runs that M. and I do every June. That was the case with this little mule deer from eastern Fremont County.

We picked him up two days ago from the woman who had found him. He had a quick 45-minute ride to the wildlife rehabilitors, and now he is in the antelope/deer fawn enclosure, behind a high chainlink fence reinforced with barbed wire and electric wire— all to keep predators from thinking it is some kind of snack bar. (So far, so good.)

As all Colorado Parks & Wildlife volunteers are trained to do, we politely thanked her for taking care of the fawn and for contacting CPW about it.

As I picked up the carrier, she asked that I hold it up to the passenger seat of her Chrysler Pacifica so that the young kids in the back could say good-bye to the fawn. I did that. 

I got the impression that she had kept it longer than she should have as a learning experience for the kiddies. Like some people let the cat have kittens so that the kids can witness "the miracle of birth."

On the plus side, she had given him goat's milk, which  he accepted, and he was alert and lively when he arrived at the rehabbers' place. No harm.

Not like the woman who lived in a little house up the river in Huerfano County and found an injured great horned owl. I think it had collided with a fence or power line.

She kept it for about four days while looking up information on the Internet, where she got some site that told her to feed the owl oatmeal or something equally wrong for a carnivore.

Finally she or someone talked to the Raptor Center in Pueblo, and I was dispatched to get it. When I picked up the owl, she cooed over it, "You'll be going to a better place where they will make you all better."

No, you will be going to a better place where you will get the needle because you are too far gone.

But I was polite and (I hope) upbeat, even though I knew it was a hopeless case.

So if Colorado  Parks & Wildlife ever moves on behind the "Leave the fawns alone!" message, which is super-important, maybe they could add, "If you pick up an injured bird or animal, call now, not two days from now!"

New Front Range Colorado Wolf Report

The Grand County wolf-like animal. Photo: Janice Freeman via Colorado Parks and Wildife.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife field officers are trying to confirm a wolf sighting in western Larimer County, just south of the Wyoming border in the headwaters of the Laramie River. According to CPW's "Colorado Wolf Update" for June 2020,

Wildlife managers are attempting to confirm a credible wolf sighting in the Laramie River Valley in Larimer County. An animal sighted in the area was wearing a wildlife tracking collar, which indicates it is likely a dispersal wolf from monitored packs in Montana or Wyoming, however flights and ground crews have been unable to detect a signal or visually confirm the wolf. It has been determined that the animal in Larimer County is not wolf 1084-M from neighboring Jackson County. If a wolf or wolves are confirmed in Larimer County, they would be the furthest east in Colorado in nearly a century.

Further west, in Grand County, campers reported being approached by a large wolf-like animal. Reading between the lines of the news release, it sounds as though wildlife officials suspect this could be wolf-hybrid, perhaps one that was dumped "in the wild" but is used to being fed by humans.

Biologists responded to the area to gather biological evidence that could be used to confirm the presence of a wolf versus a coyote, lost or escaped domestic dog or domestic wolf-hybrid.

"Biological evidence" . . . . that sounds like they need a very specialized tracking dog.