With real estate values plummeting and foreclosed homes sitting empty, a family of bobcats apparently decided the time was right to pounce.
So last week, they slipped out of the parched foothills of Lake Elsinore and into a spacious, vacant home in well-groomed Tuscany Hills.
Residents of the development got their first look Aug. 27 when the feline squatters -- at least two adults and three kittens -- lolled atop a wall outside the Spanish-style house.
Someone called 911, reporting mountain lions. Four police cruisers showed up and officers ordered everyone inside. But soon they were out snapping photos along with the neighbors.
Bobcats are not known to attack humans, said Monique Middleton of Animal Friends of the Valley, which provides animal-control services.
"But are they pussycats? No. Can they do a lot of damage? Yes," she said. "They usually look for a food and water source, and there is an old koi pond in the backyard and that's where they are headed."
She said she expected the animals to move on in a few weeks, when the kittens are old enough to travel.
Tuscany Hills has been hit hard by foreclosures, and the house on Vista Palermo has been empty at least six months, neighbors said.
Said Scott Brown, who with his wife, Karen, moved here from Long Beach to be close to nature: "They are great neighbors, and as long as they don't want to baby-sit my kids, it's not a problem."
I blame chenron and the chimp. Had they not strong armed banks into .0005% APR loans that guy making 27K a year wouldn't have bought that 1.5 mil house and it would still be desert a lush woodland.
And god knows cali needs all the lush CO2 gobbling vegitation it can get to counteract mikey's 100K mile a year hyundai.
mvscal wrote:The only precious metals in a SHTF scenario are lead and brass.
Great photo of the bobcats lolling on the wall! Beautiful animals. The only time I have seen one close up was in San Diego county at Singing Hills golf course. Great course btw. Our group was walking up to putt and the green had a huge boulder on one side, with about a 20' sheer face and at the top was this totally fearless hefty (as in muscle, not fat) beautiful cat looking down on us like it was allowing us to be there. I think that the reason it stayed around was the vertical separation...knew from living in the place that the golfers never would go up where it was standing, but when I saw the heft of the animal...I was pretty happy about that vertical separation myself.
When we first moved back to Oklahoma, we lived in some really great woods that had bobcats and we heard them yelling, but never saw one. Cool animals.
I saw a mountain lion once, from a distance, but never a bobcat in all my years in CA.
Plenty of coyotes, though.
What I like to watch here is the birds. From the red-tailed hawks that you can almost always see soaring in the sky to the hummingbirds that frequent our yard by the dozens. We had a couple of roadrunners living in our yard for a few years.
smackaholic wrote:Do they let you have hot tubs in the trailer park?
Absolutely. You just have to have the right connections. And I've no doubt that a hand-wringing piss-flap with the charisma {i.e.whining ablity} that Mikey has could get the association to overlook the ordinances a little.
Ang wrote:The only time I have seen one close up was in San Diego county at Singing Hills golf course.
My son, a couple friends of mine, and I were hiking along a trail in the mountains near Ojai a couple years ago. I saw a quick flash of something tan-colored a few feet ahead of us to the right side of the trail, which dropped off somewhat steeply into some thick brush. I thought it might've been a small deer. A few seconds later, we heard a rustling from the same area as we got closer, and from the brush about a yard in front of us emerged a boar, which then started running away from us along the trail. Maybe five minutes later, about 20 yards in front of us, a bobcat ran across the trail. Only time I've ever seen a wild one.
"They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with. And they say that like it’s a bad thing!”
