When I first heard this, I thought, "They shot a 40 year old divorcee outside of The Lodge! What'd she do?!"
Then I ended up eating next to Chicago's Finest who f***ing shot the cat, at The Gaslight at 7:30 PM! They showed us pics. We were going to buy them dinner, but the GL picked up the tab.
?????????? wrote:Do cities like NY, Philly or Detroit have, like, special cougar squads that can handle a situation like this?
Tell us about you cities cougar "resources" and how they would have handled this.
About 15 or 20 years ago (longer?) a cougar was spotted in the Philly area by several people. A couple of these sightings were within city limits, and others further out in the 'burbs. But no one ever managed to catch the animal as far as I know. Photos of its footprints were taken and zoo people said they were cougar prints. But the cougar stories faded out and disappeared after a while.
I rather like that our cougar faded into legend. Occasionally, cougar stories surface again, but as we have no "cougar squad" here, our feline friend has managed to travel under the radar.
This really isn't that surprising. There are cougars in Illinois, and pretty much every other Midwestern state. However they are primarily nocturnal and keep very much out of sight, so you never know they are there.
Michigan's natural resources division spend years denying they were in the state. A college student in the upper penninsula finally got tired of being told she was seeing things, and sent some cougar poop to the US Fish and Wildlife lab for testing and paid for it herself, proving they existed. The state promptly passed legislation protecting them.
A couple years later, a team from Michigan State U did s study in Sleeping Bear Dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan specifically looking for evidence of cougars. Their conclusion was that it was a "virtual kitty litterbox" once you went looking for evidence.
In 2006 I let my dog out to run in the morning, about 5 miles from Detroit's Metro Airport. I noticed something tan colored in the back of the yard maybe 80 yds from the house. I started walking out to investigate, and realized it was a cougar lying down and facing the other way. I ran back inside, grabbed a shotgun, and came back out to get my dog before he saw it and chased it. Once I yelled it jumped up and took off into the brush behind the property.
The kicker is that the one I saw was half grown at best. Many other reports in the area, including from police etc, reported full grown cats. This tells me that there is a breeding population.
Cougars have huge territories and males will not tolerate other males in their territory. So young males get pushed into bad territories, often conflicting with people. This is how you end up with cougars getting pushed into the suburbs, they don't want to be there any more than we want them there. This is why California is so stupid, they outlawed cougar hunting but continue to build into their habitat. The numbers climb, young startving frustrated male lions end up in the suburbs killing pets. Now California kills more cougars as "nuisance control" than the hunters killed annually.
bumping that cougar
Slaying of cougar justified, experts say
By Rob Mitchum and Jeremy Manier | Tribune staff reporters
12:56 PM CDT, April 15, 2008
One day after a cougar was shot and killed by police on Chicago's North Side, wildlife experts and city officials said that the decision to use lethal force on the animal was justified.
"It's not worth taking any risks," said Clay Nielsen, wildlife ecologist at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and director of scientific research for the Cougar Network. "Cougar attacks do occur even if they're very, very rare. The bottom line is you never know, and when you have a scared public, sometimes the lethal solution is the best one."
Adrian Wydeven, a conservation biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said that dealing with a wild, dangerous animal in a city necessitates different methods than in a rural setting.
"If this was in middle of the Wisconsin North Woods or a heavily forested area, going out and shooting a cougar wouldn't be appropriate," Wydeven said. "But in an urban area, unless they are highly trained in using tranquilizer guns and have everything available, on short notice tranquilization is not always an option."
About cougars
ENCOUNTERING A COUGAR
- Pick up children immediately.
- Do not approach it. Give the cougar an avenue for escape.
- Do not run; this can trigger an attack.
- Back away without turning your back on it.
- Do all you can to look bigger. Don't hide or crouch down.
COUGAR FACTS
Habitat: Rocky canyons, tropical rain forests, prairies, deserts, forests
Range: North and South America
Length: 7-9 feet Weight: 80-230 pounds
Life span: 15-20 years
Diet: Deer, elk and small mammals
Police said Tuesday that the officer who fired on the cougar considered the animal a dangerous threat to the safety of officers and residents in the Roscoe Village neighborhood where it was shot.
"There's no doubt that lives were saved as a result of his actions and his fellow officers' attempts to contain the animal away from innocent bystanders," Police Supt. Jody Weis said in a statement.
Mayor Richard Daley also added his support for the police response.
"First of all, it happened at 5:30 in the afternoon [in] the Roscoe Village community. It was seen running between buildings. The cougar charged a police officer," he said in remarks at an unrelated event.
Daley noted that a principal at an elementary school where a day-care program was still active alerted the police of the animal's presence in a school parking lot.
"Now, I just want to tell you, if the cougar attacked a child, they'd sue the city because the police officer didn't do their job. So everybody second guesses, you know. So let the cougar run around and attack children. Everybody would be filing lawsuits, and yelling at the police and all the local officials. … Too bad that we didn't have an animal care and control personnel. [They] were en route to the scene. But again you have to make individual decisions. I didn't see a neighbor run out and grab it and say, 'Oh I love you' and bring it in the house. This is unbelievable. I mean, I just, I just. … 'Don't worry about it.' "
He added, "A cougar is a beautiful animal. I mean, it really is."
fownaq wrote:
Either this thing was doing a good job of hiding, or some idiot turned it loose. The cops said it was well fed and there weren't anyreports of animal or pet kills recently.
If this was a pet, I hope they find and shoot the owner too.
I don't know if there is a connection, but there has been a wild couger in southern Wisconsin for a while. He was occasionally seen and hair samples along with poop samples confirmed it was a cougar. The thought was he was traveling south, so this could be the same one.
Either way, it is too bad he had to die.
The poor cougar. They're just trying to survive. Too bad we don't block off sections and let them roam as they will.
Not a good idea to keep intefering with Nature.
Human overpopulation = Disaster in the making, or a disaster in the NOW.
CSU Runner wrote:
I don't know if there is a connection, but there has been a wild couger in southern Wisconsin for a while. He was occasionally seen and hair samples along with poop samples confirmed it was a cougar. The thought was he was traveling south, so this could be the same one.
He? So this is a tranny cougar?
Dr. Von Tink It Trough wrote:
there's a cougar that hunts runners in the local running club and occasionally after local races, she might claw you but she's relatively harmless
Who, Betty Blank?
The local news just reported it was a wild cougar that came into the area on its own.
the mountain lion warning sign I saw on the east side of the sandia mountains said that they can leap half the length of a basketball court. it also suggested that if a mountain lion attacks, you should fight back.
ChiTown Hustler wrote:
When I first heard this, I thought, "They shot a 40 year old divorcee outside of The Lodge! What'd she do?!"
Then I ended up eating next to Chicago's Finest who f***ing shot the cat, at The Gaslight at 7:30 PM! They showed us pics. We were going to buy them dinner, but the GL picked up the tab.
Man, I wish people would buy me dinner for standard performance at my job...