A few years ago, I was walking on the Canyon Trail in Placerita Canyon headed toward the Walker Ranch when an excited young couple walking briskly from the other direction stopped me.

“Be careful,” they said. “We just saw a mountain lion.”

A mountain lion – in full, broad daylight, on the Canyon Trail? That required a few more questions.

“That is great. What did it look like?”

“It was big. It looked like it was hunting something.”

“That is very exciting, and you must have been scared a little bit. What color was it?”

“It was yellow with brown spots.”

That was the hint I was waiting for. Brown spots are seen on a bobcat but never on a mountain lion. What they saw was a bobcat or a lynx. Those two names are used for the same animal. The bobcat is found in our area and is part of the Lynx genus. There are four lynx in this genus, and the bobcat is the smallest of the four.

We have the same naming problem with the mountain lion, which is also known under the names cougar and puma in different states, although it is the same animal. The mountain lion is larger than a bobcat and more elusive. It also needs a much larger hunting area to survive, so of course there are fewrr of them.

However, a good-sized bobcat is always an interesting sight and makes for an exciting encounter. That same bobcat hung around the area and was seen by the docents a few days later after an outreach on the trail.

They are usually seen crossing a quiet road just after sunset, as they tend to be crepuscular. This means they hunt just after sunset and around sunrise. But they are opportunist predators, also seen hunting in broad daylight, especially during the fall and winter when prey is more active during the day.

They stalk their prey and try to get it with a short chase or pounce, killing with their sharp, retractable claws. They look for rabbits, small rodents, birds on the ground, even insects.

They can survive a long time without food but will make up for it by eating heavily when prey is easy to get. They will go after cats and small dogs, so do keep your pets indoors. They will occasionally attack poultry, sheep and goats, and are even known to attack deer. Most of those attacks are on fawns, but they can also surprise attack a deer lying down, grabbing the neck, throat or skull. On those rare occasions, the bobcat lightly buries this large prey and comes back for a number of days to feed on the carcass.

So, if it can attack a deer successfully, we are talking about a wild cat with significant muscle power. Actually it can kill prey up to eight times its body weight. So that should inspire a certain amount of respect from us. They do not attack humans, but we should not corner them anyway; they have sharp claws.

Like most cats, bobcats are loners, but their hunting ranges often overlap. They are more lenient of females entering their hunting range. For males, a hierarchy is established where young males can hunt in certain areas,but are prevented by adult males from entering others.

Usually bobcats live only six to eight years in the wild; the longest life recorded in the wild was 16.

They start to reproduce when they are 2 years old, with mating taking place in February or March. The female who is receptive will mate with a few males.

Bobcats are usually quiet and do not let their presence be known, but during courtship they make loud screams and hisses. The females will have two to four kittens, giving birth in a small cave, brush pile, under a rock ledge or even in a hole in the ground. She raises the kittens, weaning them at two months.

The mother provides complete care of the young from day one and the male is not involved. She teaches them to hunt when they are 3 to 4 months old, and by the fall of their birth year, they are on their own.

They have to feed themselves and find a territory where they can hunt. Kittens can be prey for owls, eagles, foxes, and even adult male bobcats. Being juveniles and having to feed themselves are difficult times, and many do not survive.

Bobcats, like all cats, “directly register” their footprints. That means the hind leg print comes right on top of the front leg print. Also, if you look for their footprints in the mud, you won’t see any claw marks, as they are retractable.

Bobcats seem to be able to live close to humans as long as they can find enough prey to survive. They are able to live in many habitats: wooded areas, semi-desert, urban edge, and swamp environments. Their tan coat with spots is perfect camouflage in those varied kinds of surroundings.

According to the different states where it can be seen, the bobcat is tan to light brown, but it always has brown spots on the coat and dark bars on the tail and legs. The most striking feature it has, in my humble opinion, is the wild black tuft on the ears. That spells lynx for me, for sure. Also, one of its strong trademarks is a black-tipped, stubby tail. The name “bobcat” refers to its tail – or the absence thereof.

I had the great surprise and total gift to see a bobcat in my backyard one morning. It had been drizzling during the night, and it found a great hiding place under a large bush. I have learned to look out the window right away if my dog barks like crazy early in the morning, so I had a good, long look at the bobcat to my heart’s delight. The barking dog, inside the house, did not bother the bobcat one bit, and it strolled through the backyard, stopping, mildly interested, in front of my aviary. When I went later on to check the place where it spent the night, the musky smell was strong, and my dog went crazy again. They mark their spot with urine and feces.

The bobcat is a wild animal that gives you a window into how the wild kingdom lives and survives nicely in a world parallel to our human lives. It is believed they descend from the Eurasian lynx that came across the Bering Land Bridge 2.6 million years ago. Bobcats are not threatened with extinction, but hunting and trapping are supervised.

Bobcats seem to be widespread, and the population remains stable and healthy, but the situation is different from state to state. It is protected in some states and can be trapped in others.

Somehow, in spite of many years of hunting and trapping for its fur, it seems to be able to survive, and the population density remains constant. However, bobcats are faced with a different problem. As more and more houses and roads are being built, groups of bobcats find themselves isolated from other groups, so although their number does not decrease, their genetic diversity is reduced. It is important to keep some wilderness corridors so they can reproduce with other groups and not always with their cousins.

The city if Santa Clarita is very much aware of the need for corridors for the survival of wildlife and has been making an effort to buy land to connect the hills around our valley to certain areas owned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

The Mohave Native Americans believed that if, in their dreams, they saw a mountain lion and a bobcat, they would gain supernatural powers and have superior hunting skills over other tribes. Having seen both animals in the wild, I agree that if a little bit of the power of those animals could rub off on us human beings, it would have an amazing result.

Evelyne Vandersande has been a docent at the Placerita Canyon Nature Center for 28 years. She lives in Newhall.