Yesterday afternoon, Karen and I went to the property to measure for the site map and to work on the sheet-metal numbers for the address. As we were driving up, at least a dozen quail ran across the road in front of us. It makes you laugh out loud watching them scamper across the road in such a disorganized fashion with a lone straggler running twice as fast as the rest just to keep up.
Karen jump out at our gate to unlock it. Just then I saw something to the left of the gate (Karen being to the right). At first I thought it was a feral house cat. Which seemed odd because there’s nowhere for a cat to hide from the coyotes out here. Another look and I realized it was the local bobcat we’ve heard about from P.D.-Our nearest neighbor. I started calling for Karen to look, but the truck windows were all up and she couldn’t hear me. The bobcat walked lazily into the brush and stopped. Karen came over to see what I was fussing about and I could only show her where it had been. Karen climbed up high in the truck rack and we drove around a little hoping to see it again, no luck.
Later, when I was measuring the perimeter, I noticed the bobcat’s tracks on Sunrise road coming from P.D.’s direction. There was also some scat that looks like others I’ve seen lately. Maybe our rabbits are tastier than P.D.’s this time of year?
The other new thing we spotted was a wild fire off in the distance; not nearly as nice as a bobcat–not nice at all. Just before we decided it was time to go home we climbed up on top of the storage container with a couple of chairs to enjoy the view; I was also hoping to spot the bobcat again. It was lovely except for the fire in the distance. The fire is in Hog Canyon near Douglas, AZ, about forty miles away according to GoogleEarth. I don’t think it’s going to be bad as there’s no wind to speak of at the moment. They are setting backfires to fight it, so it probably looked worse than it was. After it got dark, the fire was easier and eerier to see.