Cougar Shot in Chicago

In an article by WMAQ-TV, on the MSNBC news page today, we're told that North Chicago police officers cornered a wayward cougar in an alley up against a fence, and then shot the animal as it was attacking them.

I am guessing that this cougar is a pet because: 1. Wild cougars are not expected to be "well-fed" 2. Cougars do not like to be in flat-land like that part of Chicago. 3. I've seen this sad story before.

Back in 1995 the American public heard all kinds of butchered stories about a place in southeast Idaho called Ligertown. You were told that people named Bob and Dotty had crossbreeds of lions and tigers in rickety cages, and that these dangerous animals got loose. For a while the media was all over the Ligertown story, and the picture of one dead animal beside a small pickup truck in Bob and Dotty's yard. 19 animals were shot that day for no reason.

The Ligertown story didn't happen exactly as the media tried to get everybody to believe that it happened. To set the scene, picture a steep 6-mile hill with a highway running up the side of the hill; at the bottom, you have farm land and maybe a dozen spread-out houses. At the top of the hill, nestled into a nook, you have a tiny tourist town with a river running through it. Between these two places, you had Bob and Dotty and their animals.

The official media report has never told anybody about the night before the animals got loose, that a truck going up the highway was asking on his CB if he was really seeing a tiger or lion cross the road. I calmly answered him from my driveway at the bottom of the hill, a cheery little remark asking if he'd like me to chase it back so that he could get a picture. For that matter, I don't know if anybody except the truck and me knew that a cat was out before Ligertown was turned into a media circus. And, it didn't bother me one little bit to hear that trucker mumble that a cat was out. I just figured that the wayward bear that people were seeing near the canyon would scare the cat into going home.

The official media report called Bob and Dotty's pens "rickety" and made it sound like they were doing nothing about trying to keep their pets safe. That wasn't right either. My tiny girls and I were right beside those pens more than once. They were ugly, but solid and gave the animals a nice area to play in. I looked closely at the construction because I was one of the people who had donated some of my unwanted building supplies.

When the picture of the dead cat beside the truck went flashing across my television screen two-days after I had talked to the truck driver, and media hell was breaking loose up the road from me... I cried. That dead cat looked like the older one who liked to ride in the back of that truck in a cage. They'd drive through the tourist town where I had a store, and the cat looked like one very happy dog out on an outing. It liked the truck.

If that cat was shot beside the truck while it thought it was going to go out for a drive? That picture still upsets me. The Ligertown cat was reported as "cornered" just like Chicago's cougar was before being shot. The cops didn't have to shoot either of these animals; they just had to stay calm until animal experts arrived. They sure didn't have to shoot the 19 animals from Bob and Dotty's.

Everybody in my area was told more or less that these animals were going to eat us instantly if we saw any more of them loose. My reaction was fury. Like we all didn't know how many animals were supposed to be involved? And, I had a quiet smile going on inside, maybe the one that the trucker saw actually got away before the slaughter. No, I wasn't afraid. Wild animals go away from people and not towards them if they can help it. If there was a cat out there, we were all safe enough as long as we didn't corner it.

With Ligertown, I knew that something wasn't right with the official media stories; the pens were sturdy, how were the animals getting out all of a sudden... Later, mixed into a follow-up story on Ligertown, it came out that the owners were upset over what looked like somebody cutting fences. But, that was hushed-up quickly when authorities razed the property instantly as a health hazard so that nobody could see the fences.

My predictions on the Chicago cougar is that we'll hear all about how some bad owner had a cougar escape. They'll arrest that owner on all kinds of charges. I predict that those charges will include stupid things like Bob and Dotty being charged with picking up feathers while out walking, and not knowing that you can't touch some pretty feathers under a Federal Law.

Then, I predict that Chicago will give the gunman a hero's medal for tormenting that cornered animal into trying to run away so that he could shoot it, instead of letting the people who know what they are doing try to save it. And, lastly I predict that we'll never hear about how Chicago's animal tranquilizer squad or zoo feels about this dead cougar.