Bobcat Puts Up A Fuss In Tucson-Area Woman's Closet: Video

PICTURE ROCKS, AZ — The bobcat didn’t wait for an invitation — as if anyone would willingly bring one of the wildcats that roam Arizona from its deserts to the high country in for a chat. The only knock at the home of a Tucson-area woman earlier this month was on a window screen, and it was powerful enough to loosen the frame, creating a big enough opening for the animal to crawl in and make herself at home in the closet.

The noise startled Donna Zeidel. She thought the intruder was of the human variety. She grabbed her gun, prepared to defend her property.

She saw the screen ajar on a small window in the hallway and realized she wasn’t dealing with what she thought she was.

“I walked into my closet. I was looking up and looking down,” Zeidel told news station KVOA. “And there, in the left-hand corner, it was a bobcat. It was a bobcat that had broken into my house.”

She wasn’t sure what to do. She called a wildlife rescue group and was eventually referred to Animal Experts Inc., a Tucson business licensed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department to relocate wildlife in southern Arizona.

The bobcat remained in the closet until the professionals arrived and apparently was content to stay there. Marc Hammond and Jeff Carver tried to coax her out, but the wildcat was having none of that.

Finally, the two Animal Experts specialists used a 12-foot pole with a loop at the end to move her along, news station KPHO reported. She growled. Clothing and shoes flew. Finally, they got her into the cage and then released her back into the wild.

“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it,” Carver said on the video posted on the Animal Experts Facebook page.

Zeidel said she’s seen three bobcats — elusive, timid creatures that typically avoid human contact — but she won’t soon forget her latest encounter. She told KVOA the corner of the closet where the bobcat cowered now has a name.

“That’s his corner, Bobcat Corner,” she said.

Hammond and Carver figure the bobcat spied a lizard — another creature in the Arizona desert — on the window screen and was trying to get at it when the screen broke.

The pretty cat species is common in Arizona. They’re about two or three times larger than domestic cats, and have orange, gray and black markings similar to a tabby. But bobcats are ferocious when challenged and can inflict serious harm with their large claws and teeth.

They’re found throughout Arizona, but as more humans encroach on their territory, they’re fairly common in neighborhoods as their habitat vanishes.

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