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Police shoot wild cougar on the loose in Chicago


Chicago residents today were puzzled, to say the least, by how a wild cougar had come to roam loose in the city's North Side and suburbs Monday. Officials on Tuesday defended their decision to kill it, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The cougar was a male wild cat, not an escaped captive animal, Cook County Animal and Rabies Control administrator Donna Alexander said Tuesday afternoon.

"He did not have any identifying marks as if he had been owned. He was a wild cat," Alexander said. "He was a pretty vicious guy out there in the wild, fending for himself, so the possibility of an attack was there," Alexander said.

Though it is still unclear where the cougar came from, by late Monday the animal lay dead in an alley, shot by police who said they feared it would attack them.

Chicago Police Capt. Mike Ryan said the cougar tried to attack the officers when they tried to contain it. Police said they could not tranquilize the animal because police officers typically do not carry tranquilizer guns...

"It was turning on the officers," Ryan said. "There was no way to take it into custody."

-- Tony Barboza

Photo: Candice C. Cusic/Chicago Tribune

poll on whether the Chicago police were correct to shoot the cougar in town


http://chicago.about.com/b/2008/04/15/s ... cougar.htm

Jennifer's Chicago Blog
By Jennifer Roche, About.com Guide to ChicagoMy BioMy BlogMy ForumAdd to: iGoogleMy Yahoo!RSS
Should the Chicago Police have Killed the Roscoe Village Cougar?
Tuesday April 15, 2008

About Poll
Should the police have shot the Roscoe Village cougar?
YES. That thing was bounding 6 foot fences and a real danger to the community.
NO. They should have found a different solution.
Indifferent. I really don't care about the cougar.

Current Results
A cougar running loose in the the 3400 block of North Hoyne in the Roscoe Village neighborhood was shot and killed Monday evening by the Chicago Police, according to the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.

Both papers and many witnesses were generally sympathetic to the police shooting, and I must say I agree. My first choice would be to safely contain the animal and return it to a habitat where it can thrive, but this one was on the loose, bounding 6-foot fences, probably hungry and scared. And, it also seems unreasonable for the public to expect the Chicago Police to carry with them the resources to subdue wild animals that are almost never found here.

On the other hand, you might recall the Keystone cops scene last July when the Chicago Police tried to capture a coyote running loose in Lincoln Park. It got away and right about now should be considering itself lucky. Wild animals roaming in our urban environment are not unprecedented and there's been time for city officials to think about how to address it.

What do you think?

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=173512&src=4



How do you figure out where the cougar's from? Here comes the science
By Mick Zawislak | Daily Herald StaffContact writer
Published: 4/16/2008 12:04 AM

An elusive cougar emerged from shadows of doubt into the public eye in Chicago, but experts still have many questions about the big cat.

Was the animal shot and killed by Chicago police Monday in an alley of a crowded neighborhood the same one documented earlier this year in southern Wisconsin? Was it the same one observed in recent weeks by police and others in North Chicago and Round Lake Park?

Wildlife officials in Illinois and Wisconsin were stymied in attempts to get information Tuesday.

"I'm not even sure whose custody the animal is in," said Clay Nielsen, a cougar expert with the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory at Southern Illinois University. Nielsen was involved in investigations of the only two confirmed cougar sightings in Illinois since the 1860s.

Calls to Chicago Animal Care and Control, which was supposed to be performing a necropsy on the animal, were not returned.

But Cook County Animal and Rabies Control administrator Donna Alexander said Tuesday the cougar was a male with no identifying marks showing it was privately owned. An examination found it weighed 122 pounds and was 3½ feet long.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources wants to get the body so Nielsen can examine it, according to spokesman Chris McCloud.

"Our focus would be where the animal came from, how it got here, how it got to the area it was at, why it was in Illinois," he said. "We're in standby mode like everybody else."

There's no law that says the state can take possession, he said.

Nielsen said he would look for several things during an examination.

Stomach contents could help determine where the cat had been. Wearing of skin in certain areas could show whether it had been lying on pavement.

That it was male would lend credence to the "dispersal" behavior of cougars, experts say. Dispersal areas of hundreds of miles are common, he said. Once established in a new area, a cougar's home range can also be that far. Being a wild animal would be an indication it was a disperser, according to Nielsen.

The nearest wild cougar population within range is in Black Hills of South Dakota, Nielsen said.

"There aren't resident cougars anywhere in the Midwest," he said.

Wisconsin authorities also are eager to get blood or tissue samples. Blood left from a cut on the paw of an animal observed in January in a barn in Rock County, east of Milton, was later confirmed as that of a male cougar. It was the first confirmed instance in a century.

Those genetics did not eliminate the possibility the cat had been captive, but it made it more likely the cougar was wild, according to Adrian Wydeven, mammal ecologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

He said southern Wisconsin wasn't a very good cougar habitat and theorized the animal may have not known where to go.

A wolf fitted with a transmitter in Wisconsin in early 2003 was found dead in a field in Indiana six months later, more than 400 miles away, Wydeven said.

"With these large predators -- wolves, bears, cougars -- when they get in poor habitat, they probably travel faster," he said.

Sightings aren't reliable, Nielsen said. He doubts the cat killed in Chicago was the same one reported by hundreds of witnesses in Lake County, but never confirmed, in 2004.

"Absolutely unlikely," he said. "What happened four years ago, I don't know what it is."

The incidence of confirmed wild cougars has been increasing in Midwest states including Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas, according to Mark Dowling, co-founder of the Cougar Network, a nonprofit research organization.

"The theory is the habitat in these states can only support so many cougars. Young animals have to disperse from where they were born," he said.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=173233&src=

The sorry fate of cougar in Chicago

The Chicago police officers who valiantly venture into the city's most dangerous and deadly neighborhoods to rescue abused dogs and cats from the clutches of inhumane criminals and gangs merit commendation.

Conversely, it was very disconcerting to read about a rare, majestic cougar being shot dead by the police.

This wonderful creature should have been shot by a tranquilizer pellet. Then it could have been relocated to a zoo or wildlife sanctuary.

Brien Comerford

Glenview

http://www.rblandmark.com/main.asp?Sect ... M=77269.21
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4/16/2008 7:30:00 PM

The cougar was shot in this parking area just behind the red scooter. Photos by TOM MANNIS/Contributor


It was at Audubon Elementary (center) where the 911 call about the cougar originated.
What you haven't read about the cougar in Chicago
Police spray cougar—and neighborhood—with bullets

By TOM MANNIS, Contributing Reporter

Web Extra!

Click here to a slideshow of photos from the scene

Editor's alert: A quote in this story contains raw language.

ROSCOE VILLAGE
Too much and not enough. That's what some residents of Roscoe Village are saying about Monday night's shooting by Chicago police officers of a cougar in a neighborhood alley.

Two elements in the strange animal tale on the city's North side concern neighbors in Roscoe Village. Some say that Animal Care and Control did not respond quickly enough, while others feel that police may have overreacted by "shooting up the neighborhood."

The big cat was first spotted at about 7:30 Monday morning by a teacher at Audubon Elementary School, half a block north of where Chicago police shot and killed the cougar 10 hours later. According to Principal John Price, one of his staff saw the cougar in an alley just east of the school, behind the 3600 block of North Hoyne.

"We called 911 at 7:30," Price said, "and about an hour later, three animal control officers came to the school and spoke with us." Price could not say what the animal control officers did after they left Audubon Elementary.

Marylou Kovak is a neighbor who says police overreacted once the cat was spotted again, later in the afternoon. She and her fiancé live at 3427 N. Hamilton Ave., west of the alley. Kovak says her fiancé, Michael Reynolds, had an unobstructed view of the shooting as he worked at his computer by the rear window, which overlooks the alley where the cougar was killed. Kovak did not see the shooting itself, she says, but said Reynolds did.

"Michael said the cougar was just cowering there," Kovak told Booster. "My fiancé said it seemed afraid." According to Kovak, Reynolds said that about "20 uniformed police officers were lined up" to contain the cougar into a small parking area just off of the alley. "Michael said about six or seven officers opened fire on the cougar." Kovak saw the police just before and just after the shooting.

"It felt like every officer in the 19th District was here," she said. The cougar was killed just before 5:30 in the afternoon.

Another neighbor, Eric Cartier, tells a similar story. He and his roommate were at home at 3420 N. Hoyne Ave. at 5:30 p.m. According to Cartier, "a lot of police" swarmed out of the alley just west of his home. "We heard police shouting for people to get inside, get inside," Cartier said, "then we heard some gunshots."


Cartier said he and his roommate initially thought the police were chasing criminals, but later were told by a neighbor that police were chasing a cougar. Cartier pointed out the spot in front of the residence next door where the cougar jumped a fence and ran through the gangway, then toward the alley.

One officer, says Cartier, fired through the fence and struck a neighbor's central air conditioner. Cartier says he saw that officer on a cellphone minutes later, and recalls the officer telling somebody "I just killed a f---ing cougar!" Cartier says a lot of bullets were fired through the gangway. "The sidewalk was full of spent shells," he said.

But the cougar was not yet dead. It worked its way quickly through the back yard and into the alley, where Kovak's fiancé saw about 20 officers corner the animal, finally killing it in a hail of gunfire.

Kovak said animal control did not come to the site of the cougar's death until about 7 p.m., 90 minutes after it had been killed by police. She wonders what animal control was doing between the time the cat was reported early in the morning until 90 minutes after it was killed.

The owner of the bullet-riddled air conditioner chooses to remain anonymous, but told Booster that the City of Chicago has offered to pay for a new one.

COP: "I JUST KILLED A F***ING COUGAR!"

Thursday, April 17, 2008 http://rogersparkbench.blogspot.com/200 ... lTransient Cougars as Colonizers

Did the Chicago cougar, shot this week in Roscoe Village, come from Wisconsin or the Black Hills? Was it a potential colonizer? Maybe; they're still trying to figure it out.
It was probably not a Wisconsin native. Cougars no longer live in Wisconsin. They are sometimes seen there, however, says the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) on their web site.

The big cats get around. Sometimes it's because they are displaced by development, sometimes they are in search of a mate. Like wolves, they are territorial and sometimes drive members of their own species out of an area to protect their own hunting ground. And sometimes, no doubt, a big cat just gets lost.

The Daily Chronicle reports that a wildlife supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources "had been tracking a cougar sighting in his state. A Wisconsin resident encountered a cougar in the second story of their barn." Although the Wisconsin DNR says cougars no longer inhabit Wisconsin, they also say that cougars are sighted in the state from time to time. Those cougars, it is believed, roam in from other areas such as Canada or Wyoming.

The Wisconsin DNR web site says this: "Cougars (Puma concolor) also known as puma, mountain lion, panther, catamount, American lion, and mishibijn (Ojibwa), once roamed throughout the state of Wisconsin. It was one of three wild cats native to the state, along with the bobcat (Lynx rufus) and the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis). Currently bobcats are the only known breeding wild cat in the state..." The web site also has an interesting map of recent - very recent - cougar sightings.

The Chicago Tribune reported that "wildlife officials say that a DNA test should reveal whether a cougar killed Monday in Chicago took a 1,000-mile trip from the Black Hills of South Dakota through Wisconsin before being shot by police in the Roscoe Village neighborhood."

A thousand miles is not really that far, if you think about it. Walking at 3 miles per hour, for 12 hours a day, a human could travel 1,000 miles in 666 days. A healthy cougar would move more quickly, and could easily traverse the distance in about a year. So yes, the cougar could very well have walked here from South Dakota.

An interesting paper (3 pages, .pdf) from 2005, titled "Long-Distance Dispersal by a Subadult Male Cougar From the Black Hills, South Dakota" supports my assertion:

The dispersal reported ... indicates that cougars from western populations have the ability to make long-distance movements over relatively short periods to the south and east. Thus, managers in these regions will need to verify sightings of cougars, not only to address questions from their constituents and media contacts, but also to determine whether they represent potential colonizers of vacant habitat. FULL PAPER at South Dakota State University...

Whoa! "POTENTIAL COLONIZERS of vacant habitat." In other words, cougars leave the area they were born in, then go out to conquer the world. Literally. Think about that. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles of "vacant habitat."

The total land area of Wisconsin, our neighbor to the north, is 54,314 square miles. Illinois has 55,593 square miles of land area. That's over 100,000 square miles in just these two states, and a heck of a lot of it would be considered as "vacant habitat" by cougars. With plenty of deer, rabbit and other tasty critters to feed on, cougars would have no difficulty in re-colonizing remote or sparsely populated areas of Wisconsin, Illinois, or any other state.

The Bench's advice: Carry copious amounts of catnip just in case you run into a colonizer.