Local bobcats create a stir

Bobcats have become a regular feature on the Nextdoor social media platform. Several people have recently posted photos and stories about seeing them in Niwot and Gunbarrel.

Avara Yaron was walking in the afternoon along a ditch on a path north of Lookout Road, just east of King Soopers. "On the other side of that waterway, that canal, I saw a large cat and the first thing that crossed my mind was, 'Is it a mountain lion? No it's smaller, it's a bobcat,'" she said. "We just looked at each other and neither one of us seemed to be frightened or startled or anything. It didn't seem terribly interested in me. It moved along and just kind of looked at me and thought, 'Uh, another one of those humanoids.'"

Yaron has only been back in Colorado a month. She grew up here, but after decades of living out of state and out of the country she came back to be closer to family in Denver. "If there is wildlife anywhere nearby I will see it. I have a sense for that," she said. Yaron saw bobcats twice while in Oregon and other wildlife when she lived in Bali, Indonesia. "I had a full grown adult monkey in our kitchen, but no bobcats," she said.

"I find those moments with wildlife to be quite a blessing so it made a big impression on me. I went home and looked up indigenous interpretation of the energy that the bobcat carries and what the significance might be for me. The bobcat is about patience. They tend to live alone, travel alone. It was sort of about tuning into your own power, separate and apart from others. Having just moved here, I feel that," Yaron said.

Bobcats are doing well in this area, according to Kevin Crooks who is director of the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence at Colorado State University. "Bobcats are relatively adaptable and can live in a variety of habitat types," he said, though they don't typically show up in the middle of urban areas unless there are corridors that allow them to travel between natural areas.

"The story of bobcats is one of coexistence," Crooks said, noting that they don't attack humans except in extremely rare cases when they are sick with an illness such as rabies. "They tend to kill less pets than do coyotes. Humans feel less threatened by bobcats than mountain lions."

Bobcats typically weigh about 20 pounds as compared to mountain lions, which are much larger at 100 pounds or more. Mountain lions are tawny colored and have long tails. Bobcats are brown with black spots and a white underbelly. They have tufted ears and are named for their short, bobbed tail.

Crooks led a CSU study on bobcats about 10 years ago. It involved remote-triggered wildlife cameras on a grid, and they trapped some cats and attached GPS telemetry devices to track them. The study focused on the western edge of the urban interface in Boulder and Lyons.

The data showed that there was about one bobcat for every two square miles, Crooks said. The animals were most active at night, dusk and dawn, though Crooks said they are occasionally out during the day. They mostly eat rabbits and rodents, including prairie dogs, and occasionally birds.

This time of year, females are feeding their kittens, born in dens that can be underground, or beneath rocks, brush piles or logs. The kittens stay with mom for up to a year.

While healthy bobcats don't have any interest in humans, Crooks said they can become habituated if people feed them, which can lead to conflict. "Our whole approach is to try to minimize conflict between people and predators. A lot of that comes down to human behavior," he said.

So, leave the wildlife alone, keep your distance and appreciate the wild neighbors. "I think it's neat that we have this small, wild felid roaming around in Colorado and it's able to persist, " Crooks said. "People should enjoy it."

"It always feels like a blessing," Yaron said. "All the animals carry messages. That's how I see this."