Anchorage resident Joann Cunningham had the chance to capture a lynx on video Sunday morning while she was hanging out in her Hillside home.
Cunningham was making some tea when she "saw something pass by the kitchen door, (and) wondered, hey, what was that?" she wrote on Tuesday.
Peering outside, she saw that a lynx had appeared on her deck. Cunningham quickly grabbed for her phone, her hands shaking with excitement.
Cunningham has been living in Alaska since 1965, and while she has seen lynx in the Hillside area before, those sightings have only occurred in the last couple of years.
"I'm living in their habitat and it can be wondrous and scary. This animal is so illusive and silent, it was magical," she wrote.
Lynx sightings in the Anchorage area are somewhat common, said Jesse Coltrane, Anchorage area wildlife biologist with the department of Fish and Game.
"The thing with lynx is they're really super curious," Coltrane said. "They don't run away."
Coltrane saw the video, and she said that while the lynx's age can't be identified by the footage, "I would imagine it's a young one; it seemed pretty curious."
Lynx populations cycle with the hare population, Coltrane said. And due to domesticated rabbits that have been let loose into the wild in Anchorage, lynx can now be found in areas where those bunnies might be running around in high numbers.
"Domestic bunnies are easy to catch and just as tasty," Coltrane said.
Contact Laurel Andrews at laurel(at)alaskadispatch.com. Follow her on Twitter @Laurel_Andrews