ELLSWORTH TOWNSHIP Bobcat found in barn is released into wild

The animal may have been kept as a pet.
ELLSWORTH -- A 35-pound bobcat caught Monday by a farmer in Ellsworth Township has been released back into the wild, state officials say.
The bobcat was trapped on the 11280 Palmyra Road farm of Don Schrock after it attacked and killed an 80-pound goat.
Dave Brown, the state's game protector for Mahoning County, said it was the first bobcat confirmed sighted or trapped in Northeast Ohio in more than 20 years.
Brown said that someone may once have kept the bobcat as a pet. He said the animal didn't appear to have any claws.
"We felt the paws, as much as we could, and could not find any claws," Brown said.
But Brown said that there have been unconfirmed reports of bobcats and mountain lions in Northeast Ohio for a number of years.
How cat was found
Schrock found the dead goat in a barn about 9 a.m. Monday but said this morning he didn't immediately realize what happened. The 7-year-old goat, Tess, was the last of his now-adult daughter Dawn's 4H animals, he said.
"There was something more wrong than a heart attack," he said. "Then I realized something had attacked her."
He heard noises in the barn and quickly discovered the cat between bales of hay.
Schrock said he wasn't at first sure what the animal was.
It was too big to be a regular cat, twice the size of his beagle dog and didn't have a pointed snout like a wolf, he said. A neighbor who is a hunter figured the animal was a bobcat, he said.
The animal didn't flee when it saw people, which was unusual, Schrock said.
"It was beautiful. It was really beautiful," Schrock said.
Schrock and his adult son, David, quickly managed to prod the cat into a 12-foot by 12-foot box trap used to trap raccoons. He was caught about 10:30 a.m.
The bobcat probably got into the barn overnight because there was no hint of trouble Sunday evening, he said.
Released
The animal later was released in a remote part of Portage County.
The release into the wild was in the best interest of all involved, Brown said.
"We had three options. We could cage the animal for the rest of its life, we could put it down, or kill it, or we could release it," Brown said.
He said that the third option was deemed the best.
Dan Cramer, a wildlife management supervisor with the state division of wildlife, said it was unclear where the animal came from, but it obviously could fend for itself.
Brown added that although it had a "laid-back" attitude in its cage, the bobcat had reverted to some of its natural wild instincts. He said the goat had puncture wounds about the head and neck and a portion of the rear of the animal had been eaten.
Atypical behavior
"What was unusual was that the [bobcat] was in the middle of the guy's barn and there was nothing else around," Brown said.
He said that bobcats typically stay in dense cover and don't venture out into open fields. Additionally, Brown said that if cornered, bobcats generally are not easily placed into a cage or trap.
Brown said the bobcat was likely a male based on its weight. He said the animal was weighed in the trap and the weight determined by subtracting the known weight of the device.
He said that confirming the sex of the animal would have entailed pinning the animal down and then splaying the back legs, a procedure that posed a risk that he and the others at the farm Monday weren't willing to take.
XCONTRIBUTOR: Roger Smith, staff writer, and Mike Braun, outdoors editor.