Big cat getaway

CAMP CREEK — “Bad people this way. Good earth that way.”

Those were the eight words of advice Jeff Picton gave the two growling bobcats just before he and volunteer Jill Jackson released the animals into the wild on a Bureau of Land Management road Thursday afternoon.

Somewhat of an ironic statement, given that it was the good people of Chintimini Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Corvallis, where Picton is executive director, who cared for the two brown-spotted creatures for almost a year.

Picton was joking, of course. He just knew how badly the cats wanted to get on with their lives. Those unmistakable wildcat growls were certainly an indication.

The cats — a male and a female — were just starving babies last May when they wandered onto someone’s property a couple of miles from where they were released Thursday.

The property owner’s dog brought one of them into the house in his mouth, said Reta Anderson, director of Willamette Wildlife Rehabilitation in Eugene, who cared for one of them for a day, feeding it fluids with a syringe. The property owner called Johnson Wildlife Services of Springfield, who in turn called the Springfield office of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Anderson took one of the cats to Chintimini, while Chris Yee, a state wildlife biologist, found the kitten’s sibling in the property owner’s yard, and took it to Chintimini, too.

Picton suspects the cats’ mother was killed. Brian Wolfer, a state wildlife biologist who works with Yee, thinks maybe the mother abandoned them when chased off by human activity.

Neither cat was named, lest volunteers become too attached. Both grew stronger at Chintimini over the summer, fall and winter, feasting on raw meat provided by Albertsons in Corvallis, said Jeannie Lorraine, one of several volunteers who came Thursday to watch the bobcats’ return to the wild.

“It’s so exciting to see an animal released that you’ve taken care of for months,” Lorraine said. “Healthy, feisty, so exciting.”

And what better day to release them than April 22 — Earth Day?

Volunteers wanted to do it a couple of weeks ago, but it was raining and so they waited, Anderson said.

About a dozen volunteers drove from the Corvallis area to watch the release Thursday.

Jackson drove with the two bobcats — the male now about 35 pounds, his sister about 20 pounds — in the back of her dark-green Chevrolet pickup with canopy.

“He’s mad right now,” Jackson said, after parking on the gravel BLM road, opening up the back and letting the male cat’s growls rumble through the spring air.

Picton and Jackson pulled the carriers from the back of her vehicle and placed them with the doors aimed up another gravel road, as volunteers stood off to the side with their cameras at the ready.

“Wildcats are in there — bobcats?” asked 3-year-old Riley, the granddaughter of Chintimini volunteer Kathi Franklin.

“Hopefully, they’ll want to just get the hell out of here,” said Picton, wearing gloves the size of large oven mitts. “Hopefully, they’ll go that way up the road,” he said, gesturing south.

As he and Jackson reached under the towels draping the carriers to unhinge the doors, the cats lunged and rattled inside the carriers.

The doors ready to go, the drapes came off and Picton uttered: “Everybody ready?”

Yep.

The female shot straight out and up the road, but the door on the male’s carrier stuck a bit when Jackson tried to yank it up. The cat hesitated, leaped out, came back toward Jackson for a moment, did a little spin and headed to the right where some volunteers were standing, then zigzagged up the road behind the female and into the forest.

“Happy Earth Day, everybody!” volunteer Irma Kapsenberg said. “Woo! That was cool.”