Lynx in the Neighborhood

We have been training teams with an ATV 4 wheeler for 3 weeks as the fall mud season turns into the winter frozen season. It’s always amazing to watch nature’s progression. Soon we won’t notice that everything is frozen solid and the sunshine is nonexistent.

I was training a team yesterday afternoon. I called it the “Big Girls Squad” to honor my leaders: Chipper and Sanka. Ha! The rest of the team was: Chevie and Champ, Perky and Spark., QT and Kodiak, Bruno by him self, Jefe by himself and Cayenne and Scooby in the back. Anyhow, we had climbed up and over a small mountain, around its base and were coming home when I looked out onto the slough. We travel on that slough as soon as the ice depth is sufficient to hold us. I saw a what I thought was weird looking log out in the middle and thought, “That’s gonna be right in the middle of our trail.” There are quite a few beavers working the area so anything is possible. Then I stopped and stared at the log for a while. It had little black tipped ears. I was able to capture the moment that the log became a lynx. Pretty cool actually!

Here is a description of our neighbor:

With a dense silvery-brown coat, ruffed face and tufted ears, the Canada lynx resembles the other species of the mid-size feline genus Lynx. It is slightly larger than the bobcat, with which it shares parts of its range, and over twice the size of the domestic cat. The lynx is a medium-sized cat and is between 80 and 100 centimetres (31 and 39 in) in head-and-body length, stands 48–56 centimetres (19–22 in) tall at the shoulder and weighs 5–18 kilograms (11–40 lb). It has forelimbs shorter than the hindlimbs, so that the back appears to be sloping downward toward the front. The stubby tail, typical of lynxes, measures 5–15 centimetres (2.0–5.9 in).