“Bobcats, Bobcats, Bobcats”: Animal Life and a Tribute to “Modern Family”

So it’s the Autumn Equinox, woohoo! I’ve been away—until January 2023, in the Hell otherwise known as Academia (I joke)—and it’s about time I get off my duff and start posting again. Yesterday I woke in my Colorado Springs neighborhood home to find three (or four) bobcats sleeping in a backyard pine tree. At first I crept close with all due stealth but they turned out to be surprisingly mellow. I got some decent photos. My tongue-in-cheek title here is a nod to the genius of ABC’s erstwhile hit series Modern Family (2009-2020), of which I’m a fan, and if you know the show, also a fan of “Pritchett’s Closets” rival competitor “Closets Closets Closets,” which was helmed by the great character actor Jon Polito—who was terrific as the gangster Johnny Caspar in the Coen Brothers film Millers Crossing (1990)—as its gravel-voiced funnyman/boss. This first pic is mother bobcat and Kitten #1, who seemed to be the smallest and kept close to its Mom:

Mother bobcat with big kitten

This second pic is a closer view of the kitten, impressive with its camouflage.

The last kitten to leave the tree, perhaps the smallest

And below is a pic of Mom giving me the stink-eye. We didn’t really bother them, other than taking a few photos, and they hung around the pine tree for quite a while before all wandering off.

Mother bobcat: the paw hanging above right is a sleeping bobcat kitten on a branch above

And lastly here’s the smallest kitten, the last in the tree, saying goodbye before it climbed down and followed the rest of the clan.

This is roughly the Broadmoor neighborhood of Colorado Springs, in the shadow of Cheyenne Mountain—supposedly home to a nuclear-defense bunker a la the War Room in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964).

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