Bobcat, Skunk, and Gray Fox

When my nephews, now men in their mid/late 20s, were still young I enjoyed walking in the woods with them, identifying animal tracks, and trying to decipher the stories told by their prints and paths. Today’s dispatch invites similar wonder and interpretation. This series of wildlife photographs, spanning just 4-1/2 hours, documents a bobcat, skunk, and gray fox trafficking the same intersection.

The first image, recorded shortly after midnight on March 30, 2022, shows a possibly adolescent Bobcat (Lynx rufus). Though the bobcat’s stature is not as large as others we’ve documented (ie. “Library Brook Bobcat”), s/he appears to be healthy and well muscled.

Although I have no way of confirming my suspicions, I conjure an account of this cautiously confident cat scouting new territory. She’s in the early days, maybe the early weeks of dispersal, responding to a survival instinct that compels her to leave mother and littermates behind. She sets out into the wild world, old enough to fend for herself, but still learning, growing, and trying to balance the excitement and challenges of establishing her own territory.

Scarcely an hour and a half later another wild wanderer followed the bobcat’s lead.

This Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis) is at once breathtakingly beautiful and uncomfortably reminiscent of last summer’s encounter when BOTH Carley and I were skunked. My compliment is 100% sincere. While a skunk’s defensive spray is an altogether different sort of breathtaking, a skunk’s flowing coat of high contrast white and black fur is absolutely glamorous.

Might this be the selfsame skunk who tortured us last summer? Quite possibly. With an average lifespan of 2-4 years, this black-and-white beauty strides through Rosslyn’s backland with an unassuming power that Carley and I have learned to respect. 

… there she was, the intent and glamorous,
Ordinary, mysterious skunk,
Mythologized, demythologized,
Snuffing the boards five feet beyond me.

— Seamus Heaney, “The Skunk”

Just shy of three hours later, another neighbor, this time the Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) who has become the most frequently photographed animal in Rosslyn’s wildlife sanctuary in recent years, followed the same path.

There’s something playful, looking about the gray fox photographs that pop up regularly on our wildlife cameras. This is true of their behavior as much as their incredibly cute muzzle and ears. They strike me as being characters in children’s books, wild, yes, but also adorable and less ferocious appearing than they actually might be if/when provoked.

So what do we make of this three part parade? Is it mere coincidence that all three wild neighbors shared the same byway and direction? I’m not sure what hidden narrative might lurk behind these images, but I’ll share one more, the fourth and the sequence.

Your minutes after the gray fox crossed our camera from left to right, the bobcat returned, this time in the opposite direction. Did any of these three animals come into contact with one another? If so, how might those encounters have taken place? Friends? Foes?

I’ll leave the answers up to your imagination.