A woman from Colorado Springs found a wounded bobcat, picked it up and placed in the back of her car close by her child who was sitting in the backseat—freaking out Colorado wildlife rangers.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Southeast Region officer Sarah Watson, who responded to a call about a wounded bobcat, wrote a message to Twitter accompanied by a photo of the bobcat lying under a towel in the back of an SUV:
“This is the sight that greeted @COParksWildlife officer Sarah Watson when she responded to a call about an injured bobcat on Wednesday. An unrestrained wild bobcat in the back of an SUV under a blanket. A child’s car seat was just feet away. NEVER PICK UP WILDLIFE!”
This is the sight that greeted @COParksWildlife officer Sarah Watson when she responded to a call about an injured bobcat on Wednesday. An unrestrained wild bobcat in the back of an SUV under a blanket. A child’s car seat was just feet away. NEVER PICK UP WILDLIFE! pic.twitter.com/x8GXL0zvNv
— CPW SE Region (@CPW_SE) September 19, 2019
The message continued with: “See this bobcat? Notice its large teeth? Imagine the claws within its big paws. A woman picked up this injured wild cat and put it in her car where her child was seated! NEVER PICK UP WILD ANIMALS. She was lucky. Please call @COParksWildlife and let us handle.”
It then said: “We removed the bobcat, which was mortally wounded. Luckily, it was too injured to react to being picked up and placed in a car. But no one should EVER try this. This could have been tragic.”
The bobcat was possibly run down by a car. If so, it’s not the first time that cars and cats engage in an unequal collision in the United States, like this instance in 2017, reported on by The Epoch Times.
Bobcat Stuck in Grill Miraculously Survives 50-mile Trip
A Virginia woman who was driving to work was shocked to find a bobcat lodged in the grill of her car on thanksgiving morning, November 23, 2017.
Richmond Animal Care and Control (RACC) Director Christie Peters said the woman knew she had hit something in Gloucester County, but it was not until 50 miles later when she parked her Prius in Richmond did she make the discovery, according to CBS.
The animal care and control agency was called in to sedate the animal and return him to the wild.
Peters said she received a text from her colleague RACC Officer Barbara Jones informing her about the bobcat and asking for advice.
“We’ve never done anything like this,” Peters said. “I didn’t want to make anybody else get out of bed on Thanksgiving morning, so I went with my dad.”
After sedating the medium-size cat, they discovered that “the only thing holding him up was a wire to his underbelly and one plastic piece under his ribcage.”
The bobcat was transported to the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro to recover. Then to be released into the wild near the crossroads where he was hit in Gloucester.
Epoch Times reporter Janita Kan contributed to this report
