I hear reports of sightings at least a few times a year. Two of them were by friends whose word I trust completely. Both said it was not a bobcat, it was a mountain lion.

One of these sightings was on our property. A neighbor was coming home from hunting late one night and heard a rustle in a tree. He shined his flashlight up into the tree and saw a mountain lion sitting on a branch about 20 ft up looking at him. He said he turned off the light and kept walking and the cat stayed in the tree.

So they are here, that's for sure.

I'm pretty sure I saw one earlier this year in a hayfield a couple miles from our place. It was a few hundred yards away and the grass was tall, but it was too big for a bobcat and it too had a long tail. I was driving around a curve and didn't get a good long look, so I could be mistaken.

The bobcat I wrote about awhile back that's been killing our domestic cats is still around and still killing cats.

But I checked and it is legal to kill any wild animal that is threatening your pets or livestock here in Missouri, so I'll work a little harder on making a winter hat out of that bobcat now that it's cooled down here.