Distant relatives of raccoons, ringtails are mostly nocturnal, skilled climbers and many people would say, incredibly cute – with huge eyes and pointy, cat-like ears.
They’re also seldom seen in Wyoming and are mostly found in deserts in the Southwest United States.
However, rural Baggs-area resident Katherine McAllister and her family had a ringtail visit them early Sunday morning.
They tried in vain to catch it “with towels and a net,” she told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.
The frisky critter slipped away and hadn’t been spotted since. A local game warden still hopes to live-trap the ringtail and get a better look at it, before releasing it back into the wild.
Strange Early-Morning Encounter
McAllister – who lives on a small ranch with her family – didn’t think much of it when her dogs started barking early Sunday morning, at about 6:30 to 7 a.m., as she recalls.
“They bark every morning at the guy who checks the irrigation ditches behind the property,” she said.
But this time, “they wouldn’t stop barking,” so McAllister decided to go investigate. She saw a small, “cute” animal perched up under the eaves of her family’s house.
She snapped some photos of it and posted them online, asking if anybody knew what the furry little bandit was.
People started responding almost immediately that it was a ringtail. They’re sometimes commonly referred to as ring-tailed raccoons or ring-tailed cats – even though they are only cousins of raccoons and not related to felines.
‘Holy Smokes, That’s A Ringtail!’
Local Wyoming Game and Fish Department game warden Kim Olson told Cowboy State Daily that somebody forwarded the photos to her.
“I saw that and thought, holy smokes, that’s a ringtail!” she said. “I immediately started asking, whose house is this at?”
Since ringtails are active almost exclusively at night, they’re hard to spot as it is. And Olson said they’re almost never reported in her jurisdiction.
About two years ago, somebody reported to her that they had seen a ringtail out in the desolate countryside. She set up some trail cameras in the area of the reported sighting in hopes of getting photos of the ringtail. But that search proved fruitless.
So, Olson was excited to finally have solid evidence of a local ringtail and called the McAllisters, eager to learn what she could from them.
McAllister said that after she called her dogs away from the ringtail, it finally felt safe enough to leap down off the awning and scamper across the lawn.
She and her husband made a reasonable effort to capture it without hurting it, but to no avail.
“Our kids wanted to keep it as a pet,” she said, jokingly.
The ringtail crawled under some pallets to hide. So, they decided to back off and let it calm down. The family left for church, and by the time they returned back home, the ringtail had disappeared.
They Like Rodents And Eggs
Ringtails aren’t particularly large. On the high end, they weigh about 3 pounds and are roughly 16 inches long.
They are named for the stripes that form rings on their tails. Each critter typically has 14 to 16 rings on its tail.
McAllister said that according to what she learned, ringtails like to eat rodents. They’re also fond of eggs and might occasionally kill small chickens.
She has “free-ranging” chickens on her property, but said she’s not worried about the ringtail killing any of them.
Instead, it might try to steal a few eggs, she said – if it’s even still around.
She surmises that the ringtail might be holed up on a neighboring property. That place has some “lean-to” structures on it that could make for a perfect ringtail den.
Would Like A Closer Look
Olson has set a live trap on the McAllisters’ property and hopes to catch the ringtail.
She wants to examine it, to make sure it’s in good health, and determine whether it’s a female with a litter of young.
If all goes well, she’d like to release it back into the wild, but in a more remote location.
She’s worried that if the ringtail keeps hanging around the family’s property, the dogs might get hold of it.
“I would want to relocate it for its own good, to get it away from the dogs,” she said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
