Ring Tailed Cat

OutdoorAbstract · Post by **OutdoorAbstract** » Sun Mar 09, 2014 12:43 pm

Saw a Ring Tailed Cat yesterday morning early on the pavement near Manker, unfortunately it was deceased. It wasn't squished but just laying there. I sure wish I would have seen a live one, after 500+ Baldy summits and certainly over 1000 hikes in the greater San Antonio drainage, it seems like I would have seen another one. I have a pic but it isn't that great.

RichardK · Post by **RichardK** » Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:04 pm

I have never seen one, either. Since they are in the raccoon family, I assume that they are nocturnal. Hence, very rarely seen in daytime. Sad that this one was deceased.

longcut · Post by **longcut** » Mon Mar 10, 2014 9:09 am

i saw a ringtail inside the yosemite cafe year before last. ran out of the kitchen, under the breakfast counter, and they shooed it out the door.

OutdoorAbstract · Post by **OutdoorAbstract** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 1:18 pm

RichardK wrote: ↑ Since they are in the raccoon family, I assume that they are nocturnal. Hence, very rarely seen in daytime. Sad that this one was deceased.

85% of my hiking time is before sunrise so I'm nocturnal too and maybe they're out there on my hikes but unseen. It was sad that this one was dead, I would much rather have seen it bounding along or cavorting with other critters.

davantalus · Post by **davantalus** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:07 am

I've seen one twice in a local canyon drainage, just after dark. Beeg beady eyes in my headlamp.

tracker · Post by **tracker** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 11:13 pm

davantalus wrote: ↑I've seen one twice in a local canyon drainage, just after dark. Beeg beady eyes in my headlamp.

Me too. Up San Fran in South Portal Cyn. was where I saw it.
Like raccoons, when they are around people a lot they kind of lose their fear. The private camp in Portal told me that one comes in their kitchen and helps itself to whatever it can make off with.
But then we had the Powerhouse Fire. It may be a year or two before any more are in that canyon.

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Mon Nov 27, 2017 7:04 am

Here's a recent photo of a dead one found on the East Fork Road.
I've seen these in Eaton Canyon a few times, and in Monrovia Canyon, but it's rare to see them in the daytime.

headsizeburrito · Post by **headsizeburrito** » Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:15 pm

Poor little guy

I had no idea they lived in the SGs and would love to see one. All the more reason to hike at night!

Post by **dima** » Mon Nov 27, 2017 7:47 pm

Nice photo. I've also never seen a living one. But recently Sean heard there was a dead one on the Gooseberry motorway. It looked like this when I grabbed it:

Now it looks like this:

I tried a new cleaning process, and lost some teeth as a result. Haven't tried to actually assemble the jigsaw puzzle yet, but will do that eventually. Anatomically, it's essentially a small raccoon.

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Tue Nov 28, 2017 5:20 am

Beautiful cleaning job on the skull. You can superglue those teeth back in if you remember which sockets they fell out of.

I saw an entire family of them in the daytime near the first falls in Eaton Canyon, and one near the same place at night.
They're all over these mountains, though most will never see one. And yes, they are related to raccoons.

headsizeburrito · Post by **headsizeburrito** » Thu Nov 30, 2017 12:27 pm

That skull looks great, what do you do to clean bones like that?

I'm always on the lookout for some nice bones, currently I only have a vertebrae I assume is from a sheep or deer. I'd love to get some skulls.

Post by **dima** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:40 pm

headsizeburrito wrote: That skull looks great, what do you do to clean bones like that?

There're a few options. If you're cool, you have dermestid beetles, and you let them eat everything you don't want. Otherwise, the fastest way is to boil the thing with some detergent. This can easily damage bones, so generally you try to keep this to a minimum. This method is frowned-upon. And for smaller things, it destroys the bone. Other options are to let bacteria and bugs slowly consume the soft tissue. You can bury the speciments temporarily, or soak them in water (maceration). This is much slower, way more gross, and makes it easier to lose the smaller bits.

headsizeburrito wrote: I'm always on the lookout for some nice bones, currently I only h
ave a vertebrae I assume is from a sheep or deer. I'd love to get some skulls.

I don't find stuff all that often, but do come across things from time to time. You just have to change your mentality from "this is gross!" to "ooh, I'm going to grab that!".

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:47 pm

I wanted to boil this guy, but I couldn't find a container that was big enough.

Post by **dima** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 1:36 pm

Oh, wow. That is a GEM! You mean you didn't cut off the head and take it with you? It's already mostly dessicated, and would be very easy and not-very-gross to clean. And what is that, anyway? A coyote?

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 1:41 pm

dima wrote: Oh, wow. That is a GEM! You mean you didn't cut off the head and take it with you? It's already mostly dessicated, and would be very easy and not-very-gross to clean. And what is that, anyway? A coyote?

I'm sure it's still there if I decide to go back before it snows. Didn't have an axe with me at the time.
It's a coyote. Or maybe a chupacabra.

Post by **dima** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 2:01 pm

Oh, forgot an important part. When you're done with the boiling/maserating, soak in hydrogen peroxide for a few days. The normal 3% stuff works ok. If one is impatient, the stronger concentrations can speed things up.

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Fri Dec 01, 2017 2:12 pm

I used the more concentrated peroxide on a Bighorn skull. Worked great.
But you're right, the 3% works just as good, just takes longer,

This is what it looked like before I bleached it. Second one I've found in the East Fork.

.

headsizeburrito · Post by **headsizeburrito** » Sat Dec 02, 2017 12:07 am

I keep a hatchet in my car, I'd certainly be tempted to go back and take that coyote skull, much easier to manage than the whole thing.

With the vertebrae I found it was already quite clean, but I soaked it in a mild bleach solution for a couple days just to kill the germs, seemed to make it a little whiter too as you would expect. Any thoughts on bleach vs peroxide if you aren't worried about perfect preservation of small bones?

Here are some remains of a Bighorn I found years ago. I'm still kicking myself for not taking them with me! It was in a very rugged area and I was nearly cliffed out a couple times and hours behind schedule, so I had more pressing concerns at the time. I've been back to look for it once with no luck and plan on doing so again.

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:05 am

Wow, that's incredible that you actually found the external part of the horn. That's really rare. The first bighorn skull I found was still attached to the skeleton and I left it where it was. Still kicking myself for leaving it there, but it would have been a long, long hike out, and those skulls are somewhat heavy over time.

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:13 am

I also found this crushed baby rattlesnake in the East Fork parking lot, but I'm assuming there wasn't much left of the skull or the skeleton. I'm always amazed by snake skeletons that are reassembled in nature centers. Must take a lot of patience and know-how to do that.

Mike P · Post by **Mike P** » Sun Dec 03, 2017 8:58 pm

Just out of curiosity... Is the possession of bighorn remains illegal on federal lands?

CrazyHermit · Post by **CrazyHermit** » Mon Dec 04, 2017 5:33 am

According to the California Dept. of Fish and Game there is no provision in the Fish and Game Code prohibiting someone from picking up a set of antlers attached to a skull and carcass found on public land. So I'm assuming that makes it legal. One federal land such as inside a national park it's probably not.

It's definitely illegal to kill Bighorns, at least in California. But in my opinion animal remains from a natural death are going to rot anyways, so why not do something productive with them.

Virtually all of the taxidermied animals you see in nature centers around the state came from road kills, or an animal that was found dead. Sometimes the bears were killed by rangers when they were deemed as a nuisance. There's one at the Grassy Knoll Nature Center near Vincent Gap that weighed 400 pounds when it was alive, but they only had a taxidermy mount for a 300 pound one. It's the saddest thing you've ever seen.

Post by **Sean** » Mon Dec 04, 2017 2:19 pm

dima wrote:Haven't tried to actually assemble the jigsaw puzzle yet, but will do that eventually.

I definitely want to see that.

Rudy Rodriguez · Post by **Rudy Rodriguez** » Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:23 pm

From 6/16 to 6/17 I lived in the Los Padres Nat. Forest. On hwy 33, at 4400 ft. I saw a ringtailed cat as I was leaving my trailer late one night to take a leak. It wasn't afraid of me . probably cuz I was about 100 ft from it. And since we lived near each other he was probably well acquainted with my scent. The deer and Jays always seemed to recognize all of us who lived there on the land. Now, seeing the cat was a rare treat...but up there we would see his tracks all the time