Joe Sulik's Image

Something was moving along the perimeter of the prairie-dog town.

At first, Joe couldn't identify it. Then he realized that the creature was one of the Badlands' most elusive: a bobcat. Thrilled at this brief sighting, Joe spent the next three days in South Dakota's Badlands National Park trying for another. 'Sometimes I spent more than six hours searching for it, only to get just a short glimpse,' he says. 'On my last day in the park, just as the sun was setting, I finally saw the bobcat catch a prairie dog far out across the grassland.' Watching carefully to see which way the bobcat went, Joe was then privy to a wonderful moment. 'Two cubs appeared from behind a rocky bluff and came to greet their mother. After a short moment of reunion, all three cats disappeared over the bluff.'