Bobcat tales

Brakes screeched the day Fred Belin saw a bobcat in the tree in front of a house near El Dorado Chemical. He had to take a closer look.

“We stopped and asked the man at the house, ‘what is going on?’”

The bobcat did not wait for an explanation. It jumped out of the tree and crawled under a truck. “ I walked over to his truck. There was a rope in the back. When the bobcat came out from under the truck and I lariated him. He did not try to bite me.”.

The man of the house came out with a gun.

“Do you want him?” Fred asked.

He didn’t.

“I picked up that bobcat up and put him in my trunk.I talked with Wayne Crow, the animal control officer. From the way the bobcat acted, I thought it was a pet that got loose. Wayne said no one had called him about a pet bobcat.”

Fred took that bobcat all over El Dorado showing him to friends and then to his son’s school Yocum. “My son was in third grade. His teacher brought the whole class out to look at it. The bobcat was backed up in corner of the trunk. The kids just stood there and looked at it.”

After school, Fred said, “I got my kids and we went out to Dr. Jim Ralston, the veterinarian. We were in the parking lot watching everyone else was bringing in dogs and cats on leashes. I said, “We ought to get our bobcat out on rope and take him in.”

Instead Fred talked to Jim. The veterinarian checked to see if there was any rabies in the state. Then he came out and looked at it in the trunk. As he looked Ralston said, “You know, Fred, if he bites or scratches anybody, you will have to have rabies shots. You need to let me euthanize him,cut his head off and send it to Little Rock.”

“Naw. I’m taking him home.” Fred said.

“I took him home and got some chicken and set it outside that night. The next morning, he had twisted that rope around his neck and was in distress. I undid the rope. He was in the back of my car with no rope on or nothing when I took my son to school.”

I drove over on Hillsboro to the pet store and talked with David Bates. I said, ‘I want a cage.’ I explained what for. David, he wanted to see the bobcat. He went out and we opened the trunk. There was the bobcat.”

“I will give you $100 for him,” David said.

“He’s yours,” Fred said.

Daved went in the shop to get some welding gloves. He reached to get that bobcat with those gloves. That bobcat backed in a corner and he hissed up. David stepped back, ‘let me go back and get the cage.”

While David was gone, I reached in and rubbed the back of the bobcat’s neck. Then I picked him up by the back of his neck. I toted that bobcat by the back of his neck into that store and we got him in the cage.”

Bates prepared a concrete slab with a fence and a little house for the bobcat. He fed it live chickens. He opened the door, and threw in the chicken. The bobcat would break its neck and eat it, according to Fred.

“David kept that bobcat for five years, then he sold the bobcat to a zoo for $500,” Fred never saw the bobcat again Thinking about having carried in his car’s trunk and picking it up with bare hands, Fred shrugs,“We were young back in those days.”