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IVINS — After a large bobcat was spotted walking around a neighborhood in Southern Utah during the daytime, the Utah Department of Natural Resources trapped and relocated the animal Sunday.
The male bobcat was spotted in the Padre Lakes retirement community in Ivins, where it had killed a house cat and was seen hunting for geese and ducks in a pond, said Steve Shipley, a local resident who used to work for the DNR. Shipley reported the bobcat to the DNR, who sent an officer to place a scented trap near his backyard.
Shipley said he was worried about the bobcat attacking his chihuahua or his house cat that had been too scared to leave the house recently.
“(Bobcats are) nocturnal, so you don’t see them as much,” DNR Sgt. Mark Ekins said. “In the daytime, it’s extremely uncommon. So when someone sees them like they have here, it’s time to move it.”
The trap was set Saturday night by DNR officers, and by the next morning, it had trapped the bobcat. Ekins picked up the bobcat Sunday afternoon and transported it to the wilderness around Pinto north of Pine Valley Mountain. The bobcat was not taken out of the trap without a fight, though; it hissed, jumped around and clawed at the air as Ekins put the it in a kennel for transporting.
Ekins said the bobcat was one of the largest ones he had ever seen.
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