Western West U residents may be fretting about the coyotes hanging around the Bellaire-side train tracks, but Northeast Houston resident Tim Wooddell has an encounter with a larger animal to report: He says a “very large bobcat” paid a visit to his Sunrise Pines back yard one night last week. Not the kind of Bobcat with wheels, the kind with very large paws. At least that’s what the Texas Parks & Wildlife biologist thinks it was; Wooddell still suspects the cat he spotted might actually have been a mountain lion. Wooddell tells Swamplot his visitor “was about twice the size of my Labrador retriever, it was about 7′ long with a long tail, dark brownish gray in color and probably weighed about 175 lbs.” The bobcat may have been more shaken by the encounter than Wooddell; after spotting the homeowner and his dogs, it jumped over the back fence, loosening a few pickets on the way.
For all you suburban wildlife fans out there, here’s the rather extensive (but entertaining) account of the encounter Wooddell sent to Swamplot:
A letter written by Grant MacKay Demolition owner Grant MacKay paints a harrowing picture of the circumstances surrounding the death of 65-year-old company worker Tauelangi Angilau in a collapse at the former Flagship Hotel on April 26th. In the letter, obtained from the city of Galveston by reporter Chris Paschenko, MacKay writes that he yelled for someone to retrieve 2 fuel cans he spotted in an area where a collapse appeared imminent. Two workers responded by running toward a portion of the structure a structural engineer later said “they were not supposed to be anywhere near.”: “’I immediately yelled at them to not go under the second floor slab above, but to get a shovel and reach for them from below (pier level),’ Grant MacKay wrote. ‘They either did not hear me or just ignored me.’ Workers continued to yell at the men to come out from under the slab, Grant MacKay wrote. . . . ‘At that precise moment, the north half of all the west bays began to collapse,’ Grant MacKay wrote. ‘
