Last year, one of my hip young co-workers clued me in on what a "cougar" was-- a hot middle-aged woman. This week, though, the other kind of cougar was spotted not too far from my home:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/894573,CST-NWS-cougar15.article
A 150 pound cougar was spotted in Roscoe Village, a neighborhood less than a mile from my house. A teacher at Audubon Elementary, a school I used to teach at, saw it and reported it to the police. Wisely, the school cancelled outdoor recess that day.
At first, most people assumed that it was a pet that some idiot had kept. It turned out that the cougar was wild. There is speculation that it may have come all the way from South Dakota. My biology teacher told me that it's not unusual for a cougar to roam over 500 miles.
Unfortunately, they had to shoot it; there was no practical (or safe) way to capture it and return it to the wild.
As if that weren't strange enough, last night we had an earthquake here in Chicago, and an aftershock later. We midwesterners forget about the New Madrid fault.
What's next-- a locust plague?
6 comments:
Oh, that's sad it was killed. Don't they have those fancy dart guns, like in cartoons? I know about the concern though. We live in coyote territory and have our dogs out with our sons at all times and do not let them go out at dusk or dawn.
A red fox running down Sheridan Ave. That's what I saw on my way to work on Friday. Couldn't they have gotten a tranquilizer gun from Lincoln Park Zoo? How long would that have taken. Really. I am so sad that this fabulous creature shows up and we kill it.
That's sad that they had to shoot the poor thing. I don't know about locust plagues but I saw several bees out today. Killer bees down south - now I'm scared :)
One of my favorite quotes is from Horace:
naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret
"You may drive out Nature
with a pitchfork, yet she will ever hurry back"
Sadly for the cougar, firearms work better than a pitchfork. The earthquake was bizarre. We all woke up but didn't know why until later that morning.
I'm sad to hear the cougar was killed. Geeze, all that way and end like that. There had to be a better way, didn't there?
Reminds me of that whale blubber video. I wonder if the very best minds were in on this one?
Life here in the Midwest just gets more strange every day. Earthquakes? Cougars? Republican Conventions in Minneapolis?
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