Posted: 3:44 PM, January 2, 2015 by
By Katie Cawood
When Andrew Lane arrived home from work on Monday, he noticed his dogs were frantically barking at something they had cornered underneath the propane tank. Lane, who lives between Decker and Monroe City, initially thought it was a large barn cat. Upon closer inspection, he noticed its spotted markings and bobbed tail. This was no barn cat. It was a bobcat, the most common wild cat in North America. “I bent over to tell the dogs to leave it alone, because I thought it was one of our cats—and then it swatted it me,” Lane said.
Afraid the bobcat would attack the dogs, Lane ran inside the house to grab his gun. His wife, Keri, was inside cooking dinner. “He had been out there for a while,” she said, “and I never heard a gunshot. So I went outside to see what was going on.”
The dogs had chased the bobcat into the Lanes’ barn and cornered him there. Lane was hesitant to shoot the bobcat, so they called the Department of Natural Resources for information. “We were just worried about it getting our dogs,” Keri said. “Heaven forbid it get in our yard. We’ve got a two-year-old.” The Lanes were advised not to shoot the bobcat since they’re endangered, but instead let it go. They haven’t seen it since.
Recently, there have been a several reports of bobcat sightings in Knox, Lawrence, Sullivan, and other surrounding counties. Bobcats are generally more scared of humans than we are of them, and most will steer clear…
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