Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
PROVO — At first 10-year-old Tailia Westmoreland thought her dogs were barking at a neighbor's cat. She had just gotten home from school Wednesday when she came face to face with a bobcat in her backyard.
"It stood up and it was huge!" Westmoreland said. "It jumped on the fence where I was and it looked at me and then it jumped back up there."
Minutes earlier, Louisa Slater got a scare in her own backyard.
"It was like way too quiet in the chicken coop, so I thought, ‘What happened?' There was like feathers everywhere," Slater said. "I lifted up the roof to the chicken coop and the bobcat was in there, and he jumped out and it scared me. I dropped the lid to the chicken coop and he ran off."
Slater said that after seeing the bobcat attack her chickens, she was nervous that children in the area might be in danger. That's when she saw Westmoreland.
"(She) was getting a picture of the bobcat with her phone," Slater said of Westmoreland. "I said, ‘Stop! We've got to call someone.' "
Westmoreland called her father, a police officer, who immediately called dispatch. Westmoreland kept recording while the officers wrangled the big cat.
Slater stayed until she was sure no one else was in danger.
"I've never seen anything like that," Slater said.
