HERNANDO, Miss. — A big cat is on the prowl in Hernando. The cat has all the markings of a bobcat, and it didn’t appear too startled when a man’s camera started recording.
Dylan Craig spotted it in his yard near 269 and McIngvale just before sunset May 17.
“I wouldn’t expect to see that walking across my front yard like that,’ Craig said. “I don’t know exactly what a bobcat sounds like, but I kind of just like, hissed at it like a cat and it looked over, stopped for me and looked at the video for me.”
Bobcats can weigh up to 40 pounds. That’s about four times the size of your average house cat. And they are native to northern Mississippi.
But fear not — Dan Dembiec with the Memphis Zoo says bobcats generally try and avoid people.
“Humans are not necessarily prey for bobcats. It would be a very weird situation for a bobcat to attack a human,” Dembien said.
However, pets, like Craig’s small dogs, are a different story.
“It is possible that they would go after a small pet and so certainly if you see signs that there’s a bobcat, if you see a bobcat around, yeah, then I would keep your pets indoors,” Dembien said.
But it appears this bobcat is already off to greener pastures. Craig says he hasn’t any sign of it in over a week, leaving him with just this brief video clip to remember its very brief visit.
“That was definitely my first time seeing a bobcat in person. That was different for sure,” he said.
It’s not the first time a big cat has been spotted in Hernando. In 2017, video surfaced of one near Wendy’s but no one was able to determine exactly what type of cat it was.
