How Shadow the lynx made his slippery arrival

Banshee the lynx. Banshee the lynx lives in the same enclosure as Shadow, who has since passed away. Shadow made a memorable and slippery arrival to the sanctuary more than a decade ago. Submitted photo

Crawford Road is usually very, very well plowed and sanded, but you remember the weather last week? Our road twists and turns, up an down rather steep hills and the ice was shining. It was relatively early in the morning and part way up the first hill two cars were in the ditch so that even Tony, who is usually able to negotiate even icy hills, had to wait at the bottom until the road was cleared. So we couldn’t help but remember one slippery, slippery storm more than 10 years ago.
The phone call had come from Montreal: could we give a home to a lynx? Not a wild lynx, a lynx bought illegally from a fur farm. He would have spent his life in a little cage in an apartment in Montreal, except the human who bought him made a mistake, he phoned the Urban Wildlife Centre to see if he could get the lynx declawed. They refused, the caller hung up, but his call was traced. Too late, another vet had declawed the lynx - front and back. When he was found his paws were still bloody. The owner made a second mistake, he offered the officers $2,000 to be allowed to keep the lynx and was instantly in deep trouble with he law. However, the lynx was in deeper trouble.
Would we give him a home? Yes.
While the snow piled up outside, Tony built an enclosure inside the barn; big twisted tree limbs, two hollow logs, evergreen branches, dried leaves and warm straw.
Since Tony and his wife, Pat, would have to go all the way to Montreal to pick up the lynx, they had to wait until the weather was good - and finally it was. Lovely sunshine all the way down - while they were loading the lynx into one of our bear-carrying kennels - and all the way back to Toronto where the winter storm hit and the lynx’s adventures began. He had to spend his first night in a small kennel in the back of a van, in a huge, noisy city, a kennel, which likely smelled of bear.
The next day, with careful driving, the roads were manageable, but Highway 141 was bad. Road 3 was barely passable and Crawford Road, pure ice. The car couldn’t get up the first hill...so they walked...with the lynx?
The kennel was made from a black culvert, with iron rods on the bottom to make it sit level. Those bars now became skids. Tony found a pole in the truck and the cage became a sled. And so they pulled it up the hills - one step up, two steps down. The cage went downhill with almost uncontrolled enthusiasm; sometimes whirling at the bottom, trying to whirl up the next slope. But at last, almost skating up our laneway, Shadow the lynx arrived at his new home.
I wish that Shadow himself could write his view of that arrival.
However, when spring came he had a big outdoor cage with a tall tree and a warm, high-in-the-treetop-kennel. There he spent a relatively happy life.
Then, after some years, he died. And hopefully, found a great forest where he could be free.
Another lynx occupied that enclosure for a while. However that lynx had not been hurt and now lives free in the woods where he ought to be. When you visit us this summer you may, if he condescends to come out, see Banshee, yet another lynx. Banshee is Eurasian, so he is not native to Canada. He was bred to be used in movies. He treats humans with some contempt.
However, last week while Tony and I sat at the end of our road, waiting for the ditched cars to be cleared away, we could not help but remember Shadow’s icy arrival!
(Audrey Tournay is the executive director of the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary and is a regular contributor to the Beacon Star.)

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