An emaciated and wounded bobcat died after Fish and Game attempted to remove it from a shed behind Dunbarton Elementary School.
Patrick Tate, wildlife biologist for the state Fish and Game Department, said a conservation officer was informed of the animal’s presence in a shed near the school on Tuesday after school officials said the animal hissed at students during school hours. The bobcat was known to be living in the area for some time but had not caused any issues prior to the shed incident, Tate said.
Law enforcement approached the shed Tuesday evening and found the bobcat, an adult female, lying on the floor unresponsive to touch by an object, human presence and voice, Tate said. She was also found with porcupine quills in her gums and jaw, and weighed only 9 pounds; Tate said fully grown female bobcats usually weigh between 15 and 18 pounds.
Tate said the animal died when the conservation officer attempted to remove it from the shed with a snare pull – a rod with a loop at the end that loops around the animal’s neck. Because the animal was in such poor condition, Tate said, the brief lack of oxygen and blood flow was enough to end the animal’s life.
He said the death was accidental.
Had the animal lived long enough to have been assessed, he added, it would likely have been deemed too injured to live. In that case it would have been killed with a single gunshot to the brain per American Veterinary Medical Association standards.
“In my opinion, it wouldn’t have been rehabilitative, because it was unable to eat,” Tate said.
Tate went on to say he believed the animal’s condition went rapidly downhill between the time it was spotted by students and when the officer found it, suggesting it did not have long to live.
“Animals tolerate human presence when they’re starving. Based on the animal’s condition, I truly believe it would have been dead by morning if a conservation officer didn’t show up,” he said.
It’s unclear exactly what caused the bobcat to come to its condition, Tate said – healthy bobcats have been found with remnants of quills in the stomach, suggesting they are able to eat porcupines and live. He said it was possible the quills could have caused the animal to be unable to eat, or a disease may have caused it to attack a porcupine head-on.
A photo of the animal provided to the Fish and Game department shows the creature as emaciated, although it’s unclear when the photo was taken, Tate said.
A necropsy might have been able to find more about the bobcat’s health, Tate said, but one would not be performed because there was no human exposure to the animal.
He also said there is no indication that the animal was diseased.
Bobcat populations have been on the rebound recently, with a total of 1,400 animals counted in the state as of 2016, compared to 1989’s count of 200.
A University of New Hampshire study by Marian Litvaitis aims to find out what has caused the population to bounce back despite their habitats’ being developed and their traditional prey’s decline.
Tate noted that bobcat populations are more stressed in the winter, which causes them to exhibit the unusual behavior of staking out bird feeders. He said it was not uncommon to find emaciated younger bobcats in the winter, but it is odd to find an older bobcat so underweight.
(Monitor reporter Nick Reid contributed to this story. Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, andrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)