Bobcat vs. Coyote

Anyone else see the late news last night on CBS Channel 11 in Dallas? They showed footage of a bobcat facing down a coyote and keeping the somewhat cowed coyote at bay. I'm not sure if the cat would have attacked the wild mutt for food if the photographer hadn't been there.

The video was evidently taken by a bicyclist who saw the animals right on a bike path in Dallas. They showed him and I think another guy with the animals. At one point, the cat walked right up to the bicycle and walked around it a little.

These animals are being forced out of the urban woods by the recent flooding. Few suspected that they're there. But I've seen a big coyote right along Lover's Lane, just inside the Dallas city line from Highland Park. It was headed down the street to a Jack-in-the Box, I think.

Other TV news showed that the drought in CA has forced animals down from the foothills into urban Los Angeles.
These include bears and cougars! One guy interviewed said that a small pack of coyotes tried to get him and his dog.

I'm glad that they finally got some rain there. It seems as if you get too little or too much rain, the animals come to town.

Have you seen any wild animals where you live? In a big city?

I live in a town of around 500,000. At night you can see Fox any where in the city running around. Also an occasional Coyote. They are pretty good sized here. Never heard of either attacking anyone though.

Coyotes,Bobcats,deer all live in the Houston area. Have a bald eagle pair nesting by my shop.

Coyotes, Fox, Deer, Turkey, and a ton of Hawk, Eagle, etc., in both the city of Detroit, and the suburbs. I have never seen a report of Bobcat, but it makes sense that they are around here as well.

A mountain lion showed up in a city park about 2 miles from my house a couple of years ago.Theres a lot more wildlife in urban areas than people realize.There are a couple of bears living on the hill in Boulder most years.

I live in Austin, TX. We've had more rain in the past couple of weeks than we've had in the last 3 to 4 years. Yesterday afternoon, my daughter told me that she had found a "little baby snake" just outside of the patio next to the doggy door. Thinking it was probably a garter snake, or at worse, a rat snake, I went to check it out. What I found was a brownish colored snake coiled up in the leaf litter just where my daughter had said it would be. I decided I had to dispatch it as it was too close to the house, and my poor wife would freak out if she went outside with the dogs and saw it.

I grabbed a piece of 0.5 inch PVC pipe and gave the snake a good whack, and was shocked when the darn thing uncoiled and started rattling at me! It was a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake about 1.5 ft. long with 3 buttons for a rattle. We've lived in the same house for 25 years, and in all that time I've never seen any snakes except for small grass snakes, garter snakes, and the occasional rat snake. Our back yard butts up to a green belt, and I think all of the rain has flooded the area displacing critters like the rattlesnake I dispatched. Yes, we need the rain, but I really don't want to see any more rattlesnakes in the yard.

Regards,

Dave

I would have shot them both. 70 bucks worth of pelt.

Just a Coyote and his troop of "illegals" sneaking across the border.

arjay said:

A mountain lion showed up in a city park about 2 miles from my house a couple of years ago.Theres a lot more wildlife in urban areas than people realize.There are a couple of bears living on the hill in Boulder most years.

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Ask any varmit hunter--I don't think there is a coyote in North America that does not recognize the top of a Big Mac box flopping in the wind! I think even those in the most wild areas of North America have visted a McDonalds' dumpster or parking lot.

I've been watching the bears on the hill saga for years.New crop of tenants constantly moving in and out,city endlessly trying to tell people to keep the trash in until the morning pick up [emoji57]

When I lived in St. Louis it was just a lot of pidgeons and an occasional skunk.

We have Coyotes who live in town and bears often come to visit.
This is probably the most widely known bear visit here in Albuquerque.

[ame]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWB9UsQmTRA[/ame]

Also here in the Midwest. Coyotes have been here in our little 40,000 population city for years. I used to see them in the morning when I was out walking. Bobcats are just returning to our area. They had been wiped out over 50 years ago. The state re-introduced them beginning around 8-10 years ago, and we are just now beginnings to see them in the rural area's. Wild Turkeys don't like it in town, but they are pretty thick and we have two seasons every year for them. Deer have eaten flowers in our front yards and broken into buildings even in our downtown area, they are every where. Just this spring the State introduced a law putting Wolves and Bears in a protected status.

Our family is very aware of our surroundings in nature and are always looking for wildlife. My wife saw a bobcat a few years ago at a particularly active area for wildlife a couple miles from our house. My youngest and I were in the same spot about a year later and saw it run on the shoulder of the road and then into some scrub along a fence line towards the woods.

After our sighting I called our local DEC office to report the rare sight. The officer told me emphatically that "it was a domestic cat"! WHATEVER!!!

Yet another reason I say DEC stands for "don't even care", but that's a different topic.

Dominus_Lex said:

Coyotes, Fox, Deer, Turkey, and a ton of Hawk, Eagle, etc., in both the city of Detroit, and the suburbs. I have never seen a report of Bobcat, but it makes sense that they are around here as well.

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With all the ****rats to dine on in Detroit I would have thought there would have been hundreds of bobcats there.

I did my graduate thesis on "urban" bears in Los Angeles. In two years, we trapped and tranquilized about a dozen bears in the Angeles Forest foothills.

Texas Star said:

Anyone else see the late news last night on CBS Channel 11 in Dallas? They showed footage of a bobcat facing down a coyote and keeping the somewhat cowed coyote at bay. I'm not sure if the cat would have attacked the wild mutt for food if the photographer hadn't been there.

The video was evidently taken by a bicyclist who saw the animals right on a bike path in Dallas. They showed him and I think another guy with the animals. At one point, the cat walked right up to the bicycle and walked around it a little.

These animals are being forced out of the urban woods by the recent flooding. Few suspected that they're there. But I've seen a big coyote right along Lover's Lane, just inside the Dallas city line from Highland Park. It was headed down the street to a Jack-in-the Box, I think.

Other TV news showed that the drought in CA has forced animals down from the foothills into urban Los Angeles.
These include bears and cougars! One guy interviewed said that a small pack of coyotes tried to get him and his dog.

I'm glad that they finally got some rain there. It seems as if you get too little or too much rain, the animals come to town.

Have you seen any wild animals where you live? In a big city?

Click to expand...

Coyotes are wimps. I had a friend who lived outside of town that I had to get to give a ride to work.This was the one night jobI ever had. Anyway,I picked him up at ten PM. Most of the time driving out there in timbuktu--I saw many Coyotes and many Bobcats.One particular time--the for was thicker than pea soup and I had to drive down their dirt track they called a road--and drove about five MPH.It scared the hell out of me to see a Bobcat leap onto the hood of my car and run across and jump off.

I've also seen foxes, tall egrets and a variety of herons and owls in Dallas.

My daughter lives in a smaller town in OK and has seen deer in her yard. My son, close to San Antonio, has some land near town and sees various animals, including deer.

An Internet friend in Sweden sees roe deer in her yard. Peter Hjortberger, president of Fallkniven knives, hunts moose and has seen brown bears, prompting him to get a heavier rifle than the 6.5X55mm that he finds adequate for moose. But that's a ways from town.

The retired British professor whose comments I occasionally refer to here keeps a garden and has seen roe deer there.

A South African oceanographer who lives by Simonstown has a baboon problem. She has to keep her windows firmly shut.

Even if these wild animals menace people, the laws usually keep people from shooting them. I think that's ridiculous, if they're directly menacing someone.

Of course, urban squirrels are everywhere in N. America.

the ringo kid said:

Coyotes are wimps. I had a friend who lived outside of town that I had to get to give a ride to work.This was the one night jobI ever had. Anyway,I picked him up at ten PM. Most of the time driving out there in timbuktu--I saw many Coyotes and many Bobcats.One particular time--the for was thicker than pea soup and I had to drive down their dirt track they called a road--and drove about five MPH.It scared the hell out of me to see a Bobcat leap onto the hood of my car and run across and jump off.

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I don't agree. They can be wimps, but those I've seen are usually very self confident and can be aggressive. I cited the case above of a small pack that went after a man and his dog in Los Angeles, and four killed a singer in Canada, I think in New Brunswick.

In college, I reported for the school paper about a guy who owned a Dallas pet store. (No longer there.) He had some pretty interesting stuff, and had been bitten badly on one hand by a green tree python or emerald tree boa; I forget which.

Anyway, this guy sold the same coyote several times to the owner of a club who gave it to several of his dancers. The girls always brought it back in short order because it was aggressive and tore up their cars and homes. Ever see what dogs can do to furniture? It ain't pretty.

But that coyote in my OP here was definitely intimidated by that bobcat, which was acting very territorial. The coyote looked slightly smaller than the cat. A big coyote might have reversed that situation.

I've posted here several times about the big coyote (maybe a coydog) that went after my son in his back yard one night. He wore a leather coat, which minimized scratching and some bites, and he got out a Benchmade lockblade folding knife and opened it one-handed. He stabbed it in the stomach and cut down hard, lengthwise. The mutt howled and fled, probably to die before long. it was likely not a survivable wound. The son now wears a pistol when he goes out at night. Alas, there was blood all over that coat, thankfully all the coyote's. Scared his wife badly until they looked him over and ensured that none of the blood was his.
But the expensive coat was ruined.

Uh,oh: I just saw another nature feature on the news. They showed some snakes seen around the area due to the floods. One that I didn't get a really good look at before the scene changed may be an anaconda. I hope those aren't loose in Texas like the Burmese pythons now well established in Florida. I saw on, River Monsters this week what an anaconda can do to a man. Pretty grim, although the snake in that case didn't manage to swallow the Brazilian fisherman that it killed. But it left awful bruises on the body from its constriction that killed him and the teeth marks on the head suggested that it did try to swallow him.

I don't live in a town. Critters are a fact of life. Coons come up onto the porch every night looking for the barn cats' dinner leavings. Coyotes are thick as thieves. I have taken three in the last two years who figured out where my livestock dogs don't go at night. We have a mountain lion down by the creek. Fortunately we have a good supply of Whitetails and she doesn't bother anyone's animals. I've seen her prints right outside my pasture fence and it's clear she is aware of my herd but has decided they aren't worth the trouble. Bobcats? I took a 30 pounder last year who wouldn't quit taking chickens.