Carl, the bobcat, and the turkey king

The home I have now in Mahopac might be one of the nicest places I have ever lived. It’s bucolic, serene, very green and teeming with wildlife.

I did consider the 400-square-foot studio apartment I rented near the airport in Los Angeles that overlooked the 405 Freeway for the top of the list, but the only wildlife I ever saw there were two rage-roiding rats that were mocking a cat in the laundry room. So, I will just have to rank that place a close second.

I have been in this little cottage for about 3-1/2 years now, and the same squirrel has been frolicking in the tree outside my front window since the day I arrived. He is the size of a beagle and apparently has no natural predators. The hawks and falcons give him a wide berth. I named him Carl, and I swear that one day while I was watching him frolic, he paused, looked up at me as I gazed out the window and flipped me the bird. I lowered the blinds. I don’t mess with Carl.

One day, while looking out on the expansive lawn (I apparently do that a lot), I glimpsed in my peripheral vision what I thought was a large dog. It was not. It was a bobcat. Get a picture, I thought, and then panicked. I fumbled for my phone, raised it to the window, pointed it backwards, readjusted, focused and... poof, the cat was gone.

I remember when I was working for a publication that covered the nearby town of Lewisboro, and someone spotted a bobcat outside one of the elementary schools. They locked the place down all day. No one was allowed in or out. That inspired me to call my landlady and warn her about the bobcat and suggest she might want to remain inside the house for a while, just in case. She wanted to call the police, but I said that as far as I knew the bobcat hadn’t broken any laws. Besides, that was right around the time ICE was causing all those shenanigans in Minneapolis, and I knew that the bobcat is a descendent of the Eurasian lynx, and I didn't need all that nonsense coming onto our property and disturbing my solace.

Another time we were invaded by wild turkeys — too many to count. Probably more than 20, and they were all female except for one huge, majestic tom, clearly the leader of this harem. He actually made waddling seem regal, and the ladies followed him wherever he went, albeit at a safe distance. I thought if you dressed and cleaned this guy and sold him in a grocery store, he’d weigh about 42 pounds, probably enough for seven Thanksgivings. I think he knew what I was thinking because I swear he gave me the stink eye. I think he's friends with Carl.

I got my pal Frankie on the phone and told her about the goliath turkey, and she threatened to come over and eat it. She grew up in Alaska, so I took her seriously. I convinced her that it would not be necessary. She seemed disappointed but relented.

Carl the squirrel got me thinking about my grandfather. He was sort of a squirrel racist. Carl is a gray squirrel, very common in these parts. And Grandpa was fine with gray squirrels. It was the red squirrels he hated. They were significantly smaller than the grays, but far more mischievous. They would get on the roof and somehow get into Grandpa’s attic and tear things up. Unlike their surly gray counterparts, red squirrels are widely known for their sense of humor and practical jokes, and I believe one day they snuck in and changed Grandpa’s long-distance provider.

Even though my grandparents lived in the village where discharging a firearm was illegal, ol’ Grandpa would sometimes get out his 16-gauge and try to shoot the red squirrels off the roof. I don’t think he actually ever hit one, and eventually Grandma started hiding the shotgun shells. That was one giant step for red squirrel civil rights.

Grandpa taking pot shots at squirrels was not the only incident of someone discharging a firearm inside the village limits that I experienced while I was growing up. One time, we were eating dinner and someone noticed a fox meandering across our backyard. Foxes are generally nocturnal, so seeing one in the daytime can be alarming, especially given the wonky way in which this one was walking. It likely had rabies and with so many young kids in our neighborhood, this was not good.

My dad was not much of a “gun person.” But he knew someone who was — our neighbor Tommy. Tommy was a big-time hunter. He even owned two huge hunting hounds, including a jet black one that they called Midnight. I remember every fall seeing a gutted deer hanging from the crab apple tree in Tommy's backyard. It really freaked me the hell out. The trauma lives on.

So, Dad gave Tommy a call and he came right over with his shotgun. The fox was still wandering around the yard, another sign that it was not well, and Tommy took it down with one shot. I remember watching the whole thing unfold outside our kitchen window. With one gloved hand, Tommy picked the fox up by the tail and held it up for us to see, dropped it into a burlap sack and sauntered off. We resumed dinner as if nothing had happened.

Living where I did when I was growing up, we also had many encounters with the wildlife population. It would mostly be white-tailed deer who would wander into our backyard around dawn to graze on my father’s garden. I’m surprised he never called Tommy about that.

But with a swamp a few hundred yards behind our house and a pond behind the homes across the street, we were at the crossroads of an amphibian migrant thoroughfare. We would often catch box turtles and keep them as pets, which I am sure, looking back, the turtles were not happy about. One time I noticed a snapping turtle the size of a toboggan dozing underneath my father’s car. Dad warned me away from it, but that was totally unnecessary. The thing looked like an extra from a Godzilla/Mothra film. I went back inside and got under the bed.

As I write this, I am looking out my window. It’s pretty quiet out there right now. No sign of Carl or Hercules the giant turkey. And I haven’t seen my landlady around for a couple of days either.

I wonder if the bobcat came back.

Bob Dumas is editor-at-large for Halston Media. He was once spit on by a llama. You can reach him at dumas@halstonmedia.com.