So my title today is a nod to my writer-friend’s excellent book of stories, George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (of which I have a rare first edition). With all the ICE chaos and MAGA mayhem it’s a relief to see the natural world surviving and thriving in the face of such stupidity. Yesterday during a snowstorm we had a bobcat hunting squirrels in our back yard. Our dog and cat harass the squirrels but never come close to actually catching one. Here’s the predator in its glory:
This one is something of a “gray morph”: We’ve had bobcats in the yard before that were much redder. It almost looks like a lynx. The hunt was fascinating to watch: Bobcat treed the squirrel up our large locust tree and kept getting closer. It sat patiently for a while, at base of tree.
Finally the squirrel ran up high and bobcat shot up after it and knocked it out, then scampered down and nabbed it when it was still stunned. Like the snail said after the wreck with a tortoise, “It all happened so fast.”