Meow

I just handed in my story about Catalina, an uncommonly fast turnaround for a pro like me who likes to forget everything she thought and felt while reporting a story and then try to piece it together again months later when she's completely lost interest.

So, we have a serious bobcat problem. On Saturday, a bobcat took a chicken from our yard. The other chickens started yelling, I ran outside, saw the cat slithering over the fence with a dead chicken in its mouth. Well, well, well, I thought, what a brave and naughty little animal. I was not overly upset. I decided it was a female who was pregnant or had cubs (kittens?) and I would not begrudge her a chicken.

This morning, the bobcat took another chicken. Same routine. I felt less magnanimous and the bobcat became a male. I thought, at least he didn't get Rhoda, our favorite hen, and I'm sure he's full now, but tomorrow the chickens are staying in their coop.

You know where this is going. Rhoda. That was about an hour later. I was working on the Catalina story and heard the chickens yelling. I threw a watering can and scared the cat away before the kill was complete and Rhoda died on the patio while I patted her feathers. A minute later, as I was putting Rhoda in an empty feed sack, the chickens started freaking out and I saw the bobcat had jumped back on the fence to our yard and he just crouched there staring at me, which felt like the bobcat equivalent of giving me the finger. I threw a pot at him and he jumped off the fence onto the street. I ran out to the road and chased him into the shrubbery and blackberry vines across the street, way deep, far, far, far, and by the time I came back up and had walked in the front door, the chickens were again screaming and I went out and the bobcat was heading over the fence with the third dead chicken of the day.

A temporary solution is to keep the chickens in their coop for the indefinite future, which they will hate, but if they had bigger brains I know they'd agree that dying is worse.

I got to thinking. Would a hungry, ballsy bobcat try to take down a goat?

According to the internet, yes.

I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I really hate this empowered bobcat killing things on our patio in the middle of the day. I would call animal control, but let's just say there are some issues related to our beloved goats that I would need to think through beforehand.

We had a rat problem about a year ago. I didn't talk about it much as it was shameful and vile. I put out traps and never caught a single rat. I locked one of our cats in the coop and she never caught a rat. There were more and more rats down there all the time, rooting around in the chicken coop, scuttling down weird little holes, and, once, running right across poor Mark's foot. I would see 4 or 5 rats at a time and it became so disgusting I started thinking about getting rid of our chickens.

And then one day Mark and I realized we had not seen a rat for a month. And now it has been many months. It was one of those blessed and mysterious gifts from the universe.

But I don't think it was a gift from the universe anymore. I think it was the bobcat.