Residents Get a Front-Row View of Wild Neighbors

Hal Conaway was puttering about in his garage on Christmas Eve when he glimpsed a large dog strolling past the garage door.

When he took a closer look, Conaway was astonished to find that his visitor was no dog. It was a bobcat.

Amazed, Conaway peered around the corner of the garage.

“He stopped and turned and looked at me, not in any threatening manner, but not showing a bit of fear, either. He twitched his tail and walked away,” Conaway said.

The bobcat has since been a regular visitor to Conaway’s Thousand Oaks home, which backs against open space in the Lynn Ranch subdivision of Thousand Oaks. Conaway once spotted four fresh bobcat prints in his back yard garden, next to a stand of herbs he grows for his cats.

A bobcat in the catnip may send some people screaming for Animal Control, but not Conaway.

“We love the wildlife. It’s great entertainment to come and watch them. The bobcat does not concern us. As long as he doesn’t bother us, we won’t bother him,” he said.

Conaway’s attitude is heartening to officials of the Mountains Conservancy Foundation, a nonprofit group in Malibu that advocates wildlife corridors in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

The foundation last year began compiling reports of wildlife sightings. Conaway’s bobcat was one of more than 500 sightings reported to the foundation.

Another came from John Turturro, an interior designer who works in Ventura. Turturro spotted a golden eagle in Thousand Oaks while driving by on the Ventura Freeway. It was sitting in a willow tree outside, of all places, The Oaks mall.

“It was perched, and looking quite regal,” Turturro said.

Pam See, who lives in Newbury Park, also has had some thrilling brushes with nature. Several times during the past four years, a bobcat has ventured into the open space behind her house.

“I find it every exciting,” See said, although she sometimes shepherds her children into the house when the bobcat appears. “It’s a little frightening, but it’s wonderful to see nature right in your own back yard.”