Isabel Mosseler
Tribune
It’s not often that a lynx will show itself long enough to be captured on video, but one did just that near the ball field in Cache Bay on August 1st. Tammy Serré Beaver caught an encounter between a fox and a lynx on the railway track in town and posted her video to a Cache Bay Facebook page, where some residents said they had also heard the fox’ cries and wondered about the ruckus.
Tammy, who is a PSW at Au Château, was sitting on her deck enjoying a cup of coffee at 8:30 a.m. “I’m right across the street from the tracks. I live right on Waterfront Drive, and I was just enjoying my coffee like I do every day. I heard the fox cry for about half an hour and I’m like, what is going on? So I’m just sitting there and all of a sudden, I saw the fox come out. And the way he was acting, I was like, OK, something’s going on. So, I started videotaping it just in case something came out of the bush and then I saw the lynx. I was like, whoa, yeah!”
She said the lynx was a fair size, and added she didn’t know what was distressing the fox, whether it was the target of the lynx’s predation, or whether it had a den of kits in the vicinity. Whatever the reason for half an hour of crying, other residents of Cache Bay commented they also heard the cries. The fox took off down the track as the lynx came into view on the track, it was captured on video, to Beaver’s amazement.
Though originally from Field, Beaver had been living in southern Ontario with her husband until they moved back to the area last year. She said of the experience, “You wouldn’t find that down south! …The good part was the fox went down that path towards the water, but the lynx, I didn’t see the lynx go after the fox. So, he must have stayed on the tracks because it’s all mostly forest.” As for the fox crying, “Maybe (…) he was scared, because you see the fox backing up and crying for help, it sounded like… it was going on for about half an hour, so that must have been going on in the woods and then they got to a clearing.”
The whole experience was a bit of a thrill. “I posted on my Facebook page and then I posted on the Cache Bay [page] just to warn everybody because I know in Cache Bay a lot of kids ride around with their bikes … Just in case.” Beaver commented that it’s really nice to live in an area that can sustain such beautiful wildlife.
