Too close for comfort!
Woman concerned about visiting bobcat

The tiny village of Olmstead, between Coudersport and Roulette, has an unwelcome new resident. He made his presence known last week to his closest neighbor, the affable Dona Lehman.

Lehman heard a thump and assumed it was one of her domestic cats bumping against a window, or possibly a wayward bird.

"I looked all around and everything seemed to be in order, but then I heard the sound again," Lehman recounted. "I looked out the window and there was a big bobcat looking at me through the window."

Assuming the animal would flee, she walked to within a few feet of the window, only to discover that the cat was holding its ground. Eventually, the animal meandered away from the porch.

"I told my sister in case the thing managed to come back and break my window and get into the house -- I wanted someone to know what happened," Dona said.

Recognizing that a call to the Pa. Game Commission would probably bring a delayed response, Lehman decided to dial the Pa. State Police barracks on Denton Hill. "Of course, they asked if had called the Game Commission. A few minutes later, the police called back and told me that the guy who was in charge was in Harrisburg and would call me in a couple of days."

Dona slept with one eye open over the next couple of nights before a Wildlife Conservation Office paid a call. The officer explained that the bobcat probably saw its own reflection in the glass and, therefore, had no way of knowing that she was so close by.

A walk around Lehman's property was equally unsettling.

"The officer said he could smell the bobcat in my barn and figured it was staying there," she said. "It probably had been watching me and figured it was its own territory. Then it smelled my cats on the porch, so it was not afraid."

The officer advised Dona to watch for signs of the cat emerging in the daytime or pestering her own felines. If the animal behaves unusually, the officer will trap it and have it tested for rabies.

"In the meantime, I'm not sure where it is," Lehman said. "Every time my cats are not around, I worry that the bobcat may have gotten them. If I had not been so terrified, I could have taken a real close-up picture through my window."

"They tell me that it was probably more scared of me than I was of it," she added. "I say, no way!"