Yep, same here. My mother had a nocturnal run in with one once when she brought something outside sans flashlight, though, so there do seem to be a few living around here. I’ve also never seen a wild moose despite the fact that NH is supposed to have over 10,000 of them.
I would say the people in the picture have probably been exposed to that cat since it was young, there is no way a wild cat would roll over in such a vulnerable position to strangers. There’s probably just some clever editing of the captions to make it look like they stumbled on him randomly. I doubt it.
I live on the edge of a forest here, and there’s one that wanders through my back yard, always just before dusk. I’ve seen him (her?) three times in two years, about fifteen feet away. Unfortunately, he’s extremely skittish, and even my movement inside the house to grab a camera sends him zipping off into our ravine, so I’ve never gotten a good picture (the ravine is not human-traversable, at least not this human).
I’ve considered putting out a bowl of tuna in an attempt to get him to stick around long enough for a long-distance portrait, but I’m not sure what the laws are around here about tampering with wildlife. There are kids in the nearby neighborhood, so it’s probably not a good idea to teach it to hang around.
Some people are really, really foolish around such animals because KITTIES!!!
Evidence: Not a Happy Lynx - YouTube
I can’t quite tell what’s happening there. Per the comments it appears he has captured a wild bobcat and is keeping it in his house and trying to tame it.
My godfather raised a bobcat kitten in the 70s after he shot it’s mom in with some of his livestock - he heard the kitten in the bushes nearby the back lot. I was quite young, kindergarten age, but I was able to pet it and it acted like a regular housecat, albeit a HUGE one. It purred and rubbed on you, was housetrained, all that.
As it got older it got more feral, and roamed around the farm edges. There was always food out for it, and it never ate the chickens, although it could have.
The last contact was my godfather trapping it to get the fleacollar off of it that he’d put on - it was getting too tight. That took gloves usually used when butchering hogs - those chainlink, high gloves.
But he kept putting out food anyway - he had a soft spot for that bobcat - and the cat hung around for years. He’d get close, but not enough to touch, and never acted agressive unless you moved as though to catch him - then he’d rumble/hiss and run away. You wouldn’t see him again for a few days, then he’d be back. He never went after chickens or the farm dogs or farm cats, either. (Or us kids, or my godfathers younger kids). He just stopped showing up at the farm, so I suspect he died, but I was nearly in middle school when I heard he’d stopped coming around. So he had a good life.
So I suspect they know that bobcat or raised it. Even hand raised ones can go feral.
I think it must be a lynx. Bobcats are built lower to the ground and I don’t think they have those ear tufts. Unless it’s somehow been tamed, those people are friggin’ nuts.
If this is the case, the rehab facility did a pretty shitty job. A big part of the release criteria protocol for injured wildlife is to ensure they don’t become imprinted or habituated to human presence; that after they’re released they should see humans as a threat and won’t approach them for food.
Here’s one rehab’s (kinda hilarious) solution.
I agree. It was either raised by humans or in very close proximity to them. A friend of mine worked at a wildlife rehabilitation centre in New Brunswick and they had a fox as a permanent resident. It had been born near a new housing development, and as a wee, little kit its den was discovered and people started hand-feeding it. While not “pet tame” it was VERY human-friendly, and was eventually permanently disabled when it happily approached a human for a pet and snacks. The human thought “it must be rabid” and hit it with a stick/bat/shovel. It now resides at the rehab centre since it can no longer survive on its own with its disability.
It may not be legal to own a bobcat, but it it’s possible someone raised a bobcat kitten without proper oversight from a rehab facility, then released it back to the wild.