I was heading home from work last week and was cranking some Hank Williams as I got to the slalom on Highway 18 south of Chandler.
I was tapping the steering wheel to keep time when - whoa! What is that bounding across the highway in front of me?
It was a bobcat, that’s what it was. First time in my seven decades to see a live bobcat in the wild. I’ve seen a couple that lost one-on-ones with car bumpers and I’ve seen them in zoos, but never doing their own thing on the loose.
It was a little after 5 p.m., and the bobcat was trucking like he needed to be in Sparks by 5:15, so I got only about a three-second visual. But he looked healthy and certainly had plenty of spring in his gait.
This was at the same spot where I saw a woodchuck toodling across the road a couple of years ago.
It was my first time to see a woodchuck in the wild, too, and, in fact, I had to look up photos to make sure that’s what it was.
Woodchucks, I discovered, are uncommon in Central Oklahoma but have been seen previously in Lincoln County and environs.
Much to my surprise, I also discovered that woodchucks are members of the squirrel family. Who knew?
A hundred yards or so south of the bobcat/ woodchuck crossing is where I saw a herd of wild hogs a couple of years earlier.
They stepped out of the woods as I drove past and were gone by the time I turned around and grabbed my camera from the floorboard.
I had never seen wild hogs on the loose, either, and was surprised at how intimidating the big boar in the front looked.
He was as big as a show hog - pushing 275 pounds or maybe more - and he moved with a powerful stride. I would’ve hated to be changing a tire and have him show up behind me.
It strikes me as odd that such a short stretch of Highway 18 gave me glimpses of wildlife I’d never seen, and it makes me wonder what else might lurk in the Deep Fork River and Bell Cow Creek bottoms.
Squatches? Mountain lions? A chupacabra? I’ve never seen any of those in the wild and I’m not sure I want to.
I don’t necessarily believe that Squatches exist, but I don’t believe they don’t exist, either.
The coelacanth is an ocean fish that was thought to have been extinct for 66 million years until one was caught by a fisherman in 1938.
I figure it’s unlikely that Squatches exist, but hey. If the coelacanth can live under the radar for 66 million years, I figure the Squataches might, too.
And if I ever see a Squatch, I’m pretty sure it will be on Highway 18 in the Deep Fork and Bell Cow bottoms.