Holy shit.

Holy, holy, holy shit.

It is not possible that I just saw what I saw. I mean, I don’t even believe me, and I was here for it.

I was hanging out on the back porch, binoculars in hand, trying to tell hummingbirds apart, and I heard a squirrel going apeshit in a shrub down the slope. I looked down there, and saw something dog-sized moving through the bushes.

It was drab agouti, and I thought, (quite excited) “Hey, maybe that’s a coyote!”  The Hollywood hills are basically built up chaparral, and there’s plenty of deer and coyote around. I trained the binoculars down…

And I saw a butt vanish into the shrubs…an agouti with reddish tint butt, a butt with solid haunches and a stumpy tail (not a manx’s nub, but not a full cat tail, either–more like a cat tail chopped off halfway.) The tail was bright white with black rings.

Something dog-sized, agouti, with a stumpy striped tail?

Tell me that this isn’t possible. Tell me that there are weirdos here in Hollywood keeping giant stripe-tailed manxes, or that it was some common breed of dog. I will believe you. Because any of that will make a helluva lot more sense than me seeing a freakin’ bobcat walk through the backyard of a Hollywood estate at noon.

I went on-line to see if I’d lost my mind, and apparently it’s remotely possible that I’m not nuts–there’ve been reports of a family of California bobcats that got flushed out from the fire across the valley last week, and they’ve been spotted through this area. But there’s a far cry between that and “Hey, Ursula was trying to tell the difference between female Allen’s and Anna’s hummingbirds, and an adult freakin’ bobcat strolled by.”

My agent called while I was still gibbering and I asked her if there were bobcats. “Oh my god!” she said, shocked. “Do you have a gun?! Are you safe?” (sigh) All this glorious nature, and I don’t think most of ’em have any idea how you live with it….

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