By Rick Nathanson / Albuquerque Journal
From time to time, Christine Landers would encounter the same “beautiful” male bobcat in her Placitas barn early in the morning when she awoke to feed her horses and do other chores. They would briefly make eye contact before the cat scampered off.
That didn’t happen Jan. 12, when Landers entered her barn and saw the familiar bobcat, who at first seemed unconcerned and detached.
“This time, he just laid there on the bottom row of hay and looked at me,” she recalled. “I opened a gate going into the barn thinking he would run off. Instead, he jumped up onto the next higher row of hay, and that’s when I saw it. His right rear foot was stuck in a trap that was still attached to a chain.”
The injuries were too severe to save the cat, so it was removed from the property and euthanized.
“We see animals all the time out here – coyotes, rabbits, wild horses and bobcats. It’s fun, we like these things and it’s one of the reasons people live in Placitas,” she said.
“I’ve just never seen anything like this before, so it was pretty traumatic. I cried for a while.”