Somehow, A Bobcat Got Stuck in the Grille of a Toyota Corolla

One of the unfortunate things about owning a car is that sometimes a critter decides to make your car its temporary home. For some reason cats, squirrels, rats, possums, snakes, lizards, heck even spiders don’t seem to know any better. But at least you can just grab a lizard and toss it out the window. If something larger like, say, a bobcat gets in, you’re probably going to have to call for backup.

My First Car: Randall Park Cruised LA in His New, Gifted 1992 Toyota Corolla

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On Thursday, Portage County, Wisconsin sheriff Mike Lukas shared on Facebook that someone called in with exactly that problem. Somehow, a bobcat had gotten stuck behind the grille of their Toyota Corolla. Thankfully, the owner noticed the big kitty was in there before they drove away, because that would have been even worse for it than what happened next.

Since the bobcat was too big and dangerous for the sheriff’s deputies to wrangle on their own, they had to bring in the conservation warden to get the bobcat out. He was able to hook the cat with a catch pole and pull it out of the hole in the grille.

As you can imagine, Bob wasn’t happy about that, and we can totally understand why. Who wants to be dragged by your neck out of their safe little Toyota cave home and then thrown into a truck bed by some man you’ve never met? That’s just rude. It’s better than being dragged down the road, sure, but it’s not exactly a fun way to be kidnapped. The good news is, the sheriff’s department only temporarily kidnapped our new favorite bobcat, and according to Sheriff Lukas, safely released Bob back into the wild.

Ultimately, though, we say the real blame lies with Toyota. If the Corolla’s grille wasn’t so large that a bobcat could get in there, this situation would have never happened in the first place. It’s almost like no one in product planning thought about this exact scenario when they saw the Corolla’s design. But, hopefully, this can be a lesson for all automakers. You’ve got to start making grilles too small for a bobcat to break through and crawl behind. Otherwise, this is just going to keep happening.

‘It’s a big one’: Portage County officers pull bobcat from car’s front grill