Of all the things I expected to wake up to this morning, seeing a bobcat in my yard was not one of them. Yet here we are.

I was about to let the goats out of their shed and into their pen when I saw it across the yard. My brain said it was a cat, but it wasn’t much smaller than my dog. It took a few seconds for the pieces to fall into place.

It saw me and loped off.

I went around the other side of the house, but couldn’t find it. So I walked back to my front door and then saw it in the side yard. I went inside to wake my wife up, then grabbed the camera and started shooting pix. This is the best one I feel I can show you…

… because the better ones show the rabbit it caught in its mouth. Those will likely be distressing to many folks so I’ll hold back on posting them.

It then moved to go under a tree to start its meal. It’s right by the goat pen so I’ll hold off letting them out for a while.

It has the rabbit, and plenty more around it, so I don’t *think* it’ll go after the goats right now. They tend to hunt in the early morning and evening when the goats are closed up in their shed, so we should be OK there. Still, I’ll give it some time and let it eat in peace.

Update: After finishing the rabbit it moved off. They don't usually go after goats and there are a ton of rabbits around here so I think we're ok. I checked under the tree and, um, very little of the rabbit was left. Bobcats are efficient.