My grandmother thinks she has a bobcat hanging around her backyard.
We live in Michigan, a part of Michigan where bobcats are not known to roam the suburbs, yet Grandma adamantly insists she has seen one. Apparently she has her neighbor to back her up on this. My grandmother’s confusion, if it exists, is easily explained; she’s nearly blind from macular degeneration and only sees colors and shapes from afar. She needs a magnifying glass with a light to read even large print, so the chances she’s actually seen a bobcat are pretty slim. As for the neighbor, my mother wonders if he’s just crazy.
During a recent bobcat sighting Grandma whipped out her disposable camera and started snapping away. She asked my mom to take the film into Walmart to get developed, but my mom said the only thing she could tell from the photos is that grandma needs to have her windows cleaned.
So the mystery of the bobcat has yet to be solved. But let’s examine the facts here. As I stated above, we do not live in a part of Michigan where bobcats are known to hang out. In case you doubt me, I borrowed a map from Wikipedia to support my argument (because you know Wikipedia is nothing if not accurate). The green marks the areas in which bobcats live.
As you can see, bobcats are native to most the 48 contiguous states. But that area devoid of green is where we live and that means we don’t get friendly with the bobcats. They seem to occupy a small area at the very northernmost tip of the lower peninsula, but I highly doubt a bobcat would migrate as far south as my grandmother’s backyard.
Another fact is that we live in a relatively small city where bobcat sightings would quickly become big news. A bobcat escaping from the zoo would be huge news. It doesn’t take much for something to become news around here. We don’t have a lot going on, least of all bobcats.
And lastly, why my grandma’s yard? And why is my grandma the only one other than her neighbor to have allegedly seen the creature? Sure my grandma puts out scraps for squirrels and stray cats, but unless the bobcat is hunting those squirrels and strays he has no reason to make repeated visits to grandma’s house.
I’m intrigued. I’d really like to know what my grandma is seeing. She told my mom she’s never seen anything like it in the sixty years she has lived in that house. Never mind that someone once crashed into the front of her house with their car, whatever amalgamous shape she’s seen out her windows has her spooked.
And if it is a bobcat? Well, I guess you’ll be seeing my grandma on the news.
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I got such a kick out of this. I guess maybe since I know this Grandma…but this made me laugh out loud. Thanks for sharing
We actually have had a bobcat hanging out around our place. My dentist, the avid outdoorsman, says that bobcats are nothing to worry about (like for eating the pets or anything) and that he thinks they are “cute.” He says that when he encounters them they always seem “friendly.”
He is not blind but he may be a little bit nuts.
I certainly hope it’s not really a bobcat!
I live in a state where everyone kept saying they were seeing mountain lions, but our game commission said there weren’t any here. Someone finally photographed one and someone else ran over one. Guess what we have now? Maybe your grandma isn’t crazy after all. Or … maybe she is. My grandmother also had macular degeneration but when she was walking on the dirt road in front of her house, she knew if the water pipe was in the wrong place and used to call the road workers and make them come fix it. Then she would walk down the road and oversee their work. She was a hoot. Sounds like your grandma is too.
I’ve seen some bobcats near my house in South Carolina. A friend told me that his grandmother told him that bobcats make a noise very similar to a baby crying…and late at night they’ll be out in the woods, “crying” away, to lure people into a nasty bobcat ambush.
So, listen very carefully!
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