Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Cougar shot in Chicago!!!

OK, this is the coolest urban Chicago wildlife story we have seen since that coyote hopped into a Quizno's cooler a few years ago:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-chicago-cougar-shot-webapr15,0,98147.story

(sorry, links may not be embedding properly right now.)

Obviously, the part where the coppers shot the cougar (and put a few rounds into a nearby house) is *not* cool. *Very* not cool. But the fact that a cougar could make it into the city, especially after a few alleged sightings in the north suburbs over the past few days, is simply amazing. (Now everyone is going to be calling in cougar reports to the local police.)

We don't know if there is any way to determine whether this was a truly "wild" cougar but 150 pounds seems pretty big for a pet, especially in the city.

Meow.

6 comments:

Bill Pulliam said...

Wild origin vs captive cougars can be distinguished by DNA; let's hope the good Wildlife folks in Illinois get a test done.

Anonymous said...

Was it looking for Whooping Cranes?
:-)

Birding is NOT a crime!!!! said...

My goodness, we are mortified that anyone would even dare discuss the killing of an endangered species such as a Whooping Crane in jest.

These majestic and noble birds are highly endangered and anyone who even thinks about disturbing them should be ashamed of themselves!!!

Shame on you, anonymous number one, shame shame SHAME!!!

You DISGUST us!!!

Birding is NOT a crime!!!! said...

Back on topic, we assume there will be DNA testing done since they (obviously) have the carcass they can test.

Most of the local comments on this story have been pretty reasonable. The "that cougar could have eaten my baby" camp seems to be slightly outnumbered by the "why did you kill that poor defenseless animal" folks," with a substantial number of comments about trigger-happy Chicago cops.

Anonymous said...

Well, I guess it wasn't looking for mangos ... was it?
;-)

Jochen said...

Not Mangos, the feathers would have tickled too much. And they're too small anyway.