The Last Bobcat

The last bobcat, ready to be sent to his new temporary home.

 

The half-grown bobcat hissed and snarled as Tom Sanders of Wet Mountain Wildlife grabbed him with a noose pole and lowered him into the carrier that I held open. Unlike the other bobcats we had released last July, he was bound for another facility. Wet Mountain is winding down, and today's wildife transport might have been the last I will do there, unless something major changes.

Back on Friday, October 3, M. and I were riding Amtrak's Floridian through the forested valley of the Youghiogheny River in western Pennsylvania, the most scenic stretch of railroad between Pittsburgh and Washington, DC. My volunteer fire department iPhone app started its high-low beeping. Someone was needed at the fire house to help the ambulance crew load a patient into a Flight for Life helicopter at our helipad.

I marked myself as Unavailable. Then I looked at the incident address, where a 78-year-old woman had suffered "a fall." Oh shit. Oh no.

Cec (short for Cecilia) and Tom Sanders began working as wildlife rehabilitators at their home in Pueblo, where they both taught in D-60 schools. In the 1980s they bought a house on a small acreage farther west, still in commuting distance, later adding more land that they put under a conservation easement. Every year they cared for multiple orphaned deer (mule deer, whitetails, and even elk). Fawns eventually wandered from their enclosure into the hills.

Sitting by a tranquilized bear, Cec Sanders chats with district wildlife managers
Kim Woodruff and Justin Krall, who will be releasing it into the mountains. (June 2018)

Other enclosures and structures held bear cubs, plus beavers, mountain lions, bobcats, porcupines,  raccoons, and one time a Sulcata tortoise, which eventually went to the Denver Zoo Cec and Tom also for years housed cockatoos and other tropical birds seized from illegal traders, birds that could not legally be sold. (Those went to a bird sanctuary a couple of years ago.) And I am probably forgetting other species.

That day, Oct. 3, Cec awoke feeling dizzy and "off." Tom was preparing to drive her to a hospital when she collapsed, so he called for an ambulance. Seeing that she had suffered a major stroke, the paramedics summoned a helicopter, but it was all too late. She never regained full consciousness and died two days later. 

While Tom worked in the background, hauling, building, fixing, photographing, Cec was the chief animal-attendant, publicist, and fundraiser. Her book about their first years, If You Talk to Animals: The Life of a Wildlife Rehabilitator, is available on Amazon.

Without her, there is no facility, and no one is waiting in the wings. And what happens to the orphan bear cub in southeast Colorado? A much longer drive— or else a bullet.

Luckily, there were no young bears over-wintering. The district wildlife manager (game warden) took a porcupine and a raccoon to some state land in the Wet Mountains. That left the bobcat — the fawns would hang out with other deer and fend for themselves. Another rehabber up in Douglas County had two cubs and agreed to take this one too. Then they could all be hateful together, which is good preparation for adult life as a bobcat.

I slid the carrier into my Jeep, covered it with a sheet to reduce outside stimuli, and started home to pick up M. for the trip. It's a good thing that I know that road well, because I was not paying much attention to it.

Hoping for a Mast Crop

Male catkins mix with new leaves on Gambel Oak.

Walking around, I see a pretty good mix of leaves and flowers on the scrub (Gambel) oak. Because it grows in clone clusters, some are already mostly leafed while others are just beginning. 

I suppose that the biologists would claim that there is evolutionary advantage there: if the early bloomers are hit by frost, the late-bloomers might still be safe. 

I just remember last year driving past miles of frost-killed catkins—which meant few if any acorns formed, so many calories of wildlife food were just not there.

When a wildlife biologist refers to "the mast crop," I get warm tingles, because that word goes way way back connectimg our Colorado forests in a sense to the forests where Old English and its predecessors was spoken.

"Fallen nuts or acorns serving as food for animals." Old English mæst, the collective name for the fruit of the beech, oak, chestnut, and other forest trees, especially serving as food for swine, from Proto-Germanic *masto (source also of Dutch, Old High German, German mast "mast;" Old English verb mæsten "to fatten, feed"), perhaps from PIE *mad-sta-, from root *mad- "moist, wet," also used of various qualities of food (source also of Sanskrit madati "it bubbles, gladdens," medah "fat, marrow;" Latin madere "be sodden, be drunk;" Middle Persian mast "drunk;" Old English mete "food," Old High German muos "meal, mush-like food," Gothic mats "food").

What Every Trapper Needs, or Not

When I started camera-trapping for omivores like bears or foxes, I tried baiting them with dry cat or dog food. I figured it would not hurt anyone who ate a few kibbles. Camera-trapper Chris Wemmer, who has just written a book on the topic, said he used punctured tuna cans in rock piles and such places to intrigue certain animals and make them pause to get their pictures taken.

As I read the regs, hunting over bait is illegal, but camera-trapping is not. Nevertheless, I quit using the kibbles after a neighbor's far-ranging dog showed up at one of my sites on an obscure game trail — and then kept coming back. 

I decided to switch to scent lures and went looking online, which led me to F&T Fur Harvester's Trading Post (physically located in Alpina, Mich.) where I ordered such items as "Dunlap's War Paint Lure,"  "Dabbins' All-Call Lure," and some others.

When nothing's happening, play cards with
a deck of famous Walker hounds.

They arrived, "packed by Gabbie" and "checked by Don? Den?" — well, whoever, it was all fine.  They included a copy of their paper catalog—130 pages of everything needed by fur trappers, hound hunters, predator callers, dog trainers, and people who want to wear fantasy-mountain man-style fur hats.

The feeling when you think you might know a tiny bit about something, and then you open the door — and it's a universe! All I trap are the field mice that make it past the gray foxes and into the house, and I have a neighbor who goes out with the houndsmen after mountain lions. So this was eye-opening.

Pages and pages of traps, trap parts, trap accessories, books and DVDs, fur-processing tools, dog gear, coon-hunters' clothing, and don't forget your working apron and skull-bleaching kit. 

Not just scent lures, but ingredients to make your own: "Cheese Essence Oil: Gives off a powerful blue cheese odor that is excellent for canines."

There were high-end headlamps, sort of like the old ones with the case of four D cells that rode on your belt with the cord going up under your jacket in back to the lamp on your cap or hard hat. 

Today these have lasers and multiple LED lights and rechargeable batteries. Not cheap — $200 and up! Still, tempting.

Hang around the fishing-lures department in any outdoor sports emporium, and someone will say, "Most lures are designed to catch anglers, not fish." 

That passes for wisdom. But there is truth in it. Does the bass really respond to a perfect photographic replica of baitfish scales? Or does it just look good to the customer?

I was leafing through F&T's "Set-Making Equipment and Supplies" pages (shovels, trowels, sifters, pan covers, etc.) when I saw "Track Makers."

That is the photo up top. It's a molded paw of a coyote, fox, or bobcat, $6.95 each, which the trapper may press into the carefully sifted soil around the waiting trap.

Now I have to say, after carefully hiding human scent and deploying animal-attracting scent and maybe even placing a visual decoy that moves like an injured bird or something, are little paw prints going to make a difference in persuading Mr. Fox to take one step more? 

Smells matter, sounds matter, prey movement matters, but would a predator say to itself, "I ain't going there. I don't see any footprints"?

They might be useful if you want to teach a tracking class though.