Who Dat?

When my children would come to visit, my dad used to say, "Who dat??" and pretend he did not know who was who. (Which would cause them to laugh, argue, and talk over each other trying to explain who they were.) Well, I had a "who dat" moment Black Friday morning before dawn.

It was a little after 4:00 AM and I'd let Pepper out to do her business. She had her nose to the ground and was frantically following the scent of something that had come through our yard. 

The grass was very wet and I had noticed tracks on the driveway from some animal, but after watching Pepper's behavior, I took a second look. Suddenly I realized that the tracks were odd - they were round with no toes showing. And, since they had not yet evaporated, they were fresh. We had just missed whatever had made them.

The question, though, was what animal had left them? I put my foot beside them for perspective and snapped a picture with my phone.

Then I did the same with Pepper's tracks - notice how you can distinctly see her toes.

Finally, I took a photo of the prints together for comparison. Pepper's were slightly smaller than the other animal's.

What on earth had crossed our yard? And makes such round prints? I asked Sarah whose guess was a fox or coyote although she could not explain the roundness. Then I asked Mary Cutler, the Tippecanoe County Naturalist. She was just as puzzled as Sarah and me nor could she explain the roundness.

There is an animal that is in Tippecanoe County, lives near the river and woods, and makes round prints. It has been seen on security cameras, albeit rarely, in Lafayette neighborhoods. One of its most active times is just before dawn which is when Pepper and I were out. A primary food is rabbit, and our neighborhood is a rabbit haven. 

Could it have been a bobcat?

Here are some pictures of bobcat tracks:

Take a look at each photo

and the rounded outline of the paw

that you can see. They are about the same size of those that were on the driveway. (I measured my shoe to get a rough estimate of the diameter of the prints and then compared that to bobcat information online.)

Here is a link to a story in The Journal and Courier about a bobcat caught on a camera in the yard of a Lafayette woman in south Lafayette. 

I can't say definitively that a bobcat made those tracks. But just in case, I am being a little more cautious when I take Pepper out during those early morning hours. Last winter I had a close flyover by a great horned owl; I'd rather not have any close encounters with a bobcat.

(Although it would be sort of cool...)

The winners of the Breyer Holiday Blankets will be announced Tuesday. Stay 'tooned!