Bobcat Stuck In Car’s Grill: Wild Cat Gets Lodged In Grill That Required Cutting It To Rescue Him

In Arizona, a bobcat got stuck in a car grill when A.J. Michaels was on his way to a restaurant in Scottsdale. CBS 5 Action News reports on the incident that took place Friday night at an area near Scottsdale and Indian Bend roads. After Michaels hit the animal, he kept driving and later walked around his vehicle checking for damage once he parked at the restaurant. What he saw shocked him, to say the least.

“I felt very badly it had been hit,” Michaels says. “I thought I killed it.”

Arizona Game and Fish Department officials pondered the best way to get the wild cat out of the grill, so Geoffrey Hossack shot a tranquilizer dart into the cat so he would be calm during the rescue process. A section of the grill required cutting into it so the 7-pound bobcat could be moved. He was first moved out of one tight space and placed into another. Fortunately, the animal wasn’t bleeding.

WFTV Channel 9 wrote in its report that upon initial examination, the bobcat may have suffered a back injury. At first Michaels thought the animal was dead until he spotted movement.

Hossack then then transported the bobcat that was stuck in the car grill to Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center. A vet there examined the wild feline and determined that he didn’t suffer any “breaks, fractures or external injuries,” according to the report. In fact, Hossack is amazed at the bobcat’s condition considering what happened. For now, the cat will reside at Southwest Wildlife while they wait for test results to come back.

“I would say his condition is amazing. It’s unheard of that an animal this small is going get hit by a vehicle and survive.”

Michaels calls it a “New Year’s Eve miracle.”

Hossack says bobcats can leap as high as 12-feet and they have far more strength than domestic cats. They appear to be the same size, but they’re considerably stronger than the average feline.

Bobcats are often seen throughout Arizona.

The Inquisitr wrote on a similar story about an owl that got caught in a truck grill. The animal was hit and managed to remain in the grill while a woman drove for more than an hour in central Florida. Once the bird had finally been discovered, it was well into the day. The driver believed she had hit and killed the animal, but the owl was fine and was rescued from the front section of the car.

A bobcat getting stuck in a car grill is just as shocking — and not what someone would expect to encounter.

[Image via CBS 5 Action News]