Aviary’s Birds Are Safe After Invading Bobcat Is Repelled : Wildlife: Teacher, armed with broom, and groundskeeper foil feline’s nighttime invasion at preschool. Captured cat is later set free.

With the help of a groundskeeper and a broom, a 72-year-old woman crept out into the pre-dawn darkness Wednesday and coaxed a dangerous bobcat into a cage.

Under different circumstances, animal lover Nancy Moore might have considered adopting the wild, 40-pound feline, which awoke her at 3:30 a.m. But not when its teeth were bared and it was threatening birds inside the aviary on the grounds of Anneliese’s Preschool in Laguna Canyon.

“He looked like he was 10 times the size of a cat. He was darling, but very, very fierce,” said Moore, a piano teacher who lives at the school and tends the birds. “But he wouldn’t have been darling if he would have wiped out our flock.”

Moore’s courage won kudos from Joy Lingenfelter, a Laguna Beach animal control officer who has had to cage some bobcats herself lately.

“I’d say it was amazing, getting that bobcat into that carrier,” said Lingenfelter, who later returned Moore’s catch, unharmed, to the wild. “They are amazingly strong, and fast for their size.”

Once rarely seen outside the wild, bobcats are becoming more common in populated areas these days as creeping development eats up their territory around Laguna Beach, Lingenfelter said.

Bobcats are typically shy but should be considered dangerous, Lingenfelter said.

“I have never heard of them going after humans, no matter how small, but they will take pets--cats and dogs under 50 pounds,” Lingenfelter said.

At Anneliese’s, a sprawling preschool near the junction of Laguna Canyon and El Toro roads, bobcats have never been a problem. It was frequent nighttime visits by raccoons that prompted the school to be enclose the aviary with barbed wire and an electrical fence, Lingenfelter said.

“They lost a peacock to raccoons a couple of years back. That’s why they put the electrical charge into the fence,” Lingenfelter said. “They fortified that place like Ft. Knox.”

No one is sure how the bobcat got inside the aviary Wednesday and managed to wedge itself between the barbed-wire fence and a henhouse.

Luckily, Moore, awakened by the commotion created by the birds, swung into action before the cat could get inside the henhouse to the rare white peacocks or the Cochin hens.

After the scared bobcat crawled onto a tree branch, Moore and the groundskeeper prodded the growling animal into the carrier with a broom and locked it safely inside. Then she called police, who summoned animal control.

Although Moore felt sorry for the hungry cat, she feels like a mother to all the birds.

“I have raised many of these birds myself,” she said. “I feed them, water them, care for them and give them treats. They’re my babies.”

Her efforts Wednesday morning were nothing more than any other animal lover would do, she said.

“I’m an animal person. I tend to cats, dogs, peacocks, horses, anything that needs caring for,” Moore said.