Cougar Loose in North Chicago

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And, it's not a little ole lady chasing down hot young guys either!

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/875269,5_1_WA03_COUGAR_S1.article

....
"It was a frightening sight. It was four and a half feet away," he said. He has no doubt about what he saw and now his co-workers are having fun with his new nickname "Lion Hunter."

"All I know, I've seen animals like that in the zoo. The guys are giving me a hard time," he said. He wishes some of them would get a look at it as he did, "Then they'll feel what I felt," he said.
 
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=163796&src=3

....
It was about 9:30 p.m. when the animal approached nonchalantly, and rubbed against the front of the squad car, according to Schilaita. By then, he was crouched behind the open driver's side door with a gun trained on what he described as "this monstrous thing right in front of me."

"To me it looked like a lion," he said. "I've never been three or four feet away from any animal of that size and stature."

Schilaita said he was stuttering as he alerted the dispatcher. The animal took off as the radio screeched with responses. He didn't fire.

His encounter sparked a quick response as police combed the area near the station at Lewis Avenue near Argonne Drive. Paw prints were found, but the animal eluded searchers.
....
He said only two cougars have been positively identified in Illinois in the past century.

"It's not out of the realm of possibility, (but) it's not very common," he said.

Forest district biologists wonder whether the animal is the same one seen and later positively identified as a cougar earlier this year in Milton, Wis., according to spokeswoman Sue Hawkins.
 
Hmm. That the cougar rubbed against the squad car may mean that the animal is familiar with cars enough to want to mark them with his/her scent. I wonder if this is someone's escaped pet.

Lion
 
Hmm. That the cougar rubbed against the squad car may mean that the animal is familiar with cars enough to want to mark them with his/her scent. I wonder if this is someone's escaped pet.

Lion

:eek: I would have hoped someone would have called to report him missing!
 
Whoa. I believe that cop. Hopefully they will catch whatever cat it is. Yikes.
 
:eek: I would have hoped someone would have called to report him missing!

That would be the right thing to do for the cougar and for society. But, sometimes people raise potentially dangerous wildlife, often illegally, and when the animal grows into a large, "problem" they simply release them. They often do not come forward because they wanted to dump the poor animal to begin with, they might face legal issues, they know they will be responsible for all damages incurred by their, "released" animal, and they simply don't care.

This is how Florida has developed a wild python population. People just, "released" their large pythons when they grew to be too big, too expensive, too dangerous, or all of the above.

Lion
 
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=166285&src=3

Whether a big cat is cruising Lake County remains an unanswered question, with new information on two fronts adding more to the mystery on Thursday.

A cast of a paw print of a large animal taken by North Chicago police was identified as belonging to a dog, not a cat.
....

Round Lake Park police Thursday also were wondering what was in their back yard. A resident about 9:30 a.m. reported seeing what appeared to be a "big cat" in the woods near Route 134 and Porter Drive.

A police officer responding to the call saw it, too, said Police Chief George Filenko.

The officer said he saw "a large animal about the size of a large dog but not a dog," Filenko said. It was described as being "dirty brown" in color, with a large head and long tail, he added.

"We do believe our officer saw something that was not a dog," Filenko said. "He said it looked like a large cat. Not a house cat." The animal took off heading west, the officer reported.
 
He said only two cougars have been positively identified in Illinois in the past century.

"It's not out of the realm of possibility, (but) it's not very common," he said.

According to some wildlife experts cougars are back into eastern Canada and maybe even in northern New England after being considered extirpated from the area for over a century. However unlike past centuries cougars in Canada face stiff competition from the large Eastern coyote population. After wolves and cougars were extirpated from the area in late 19th century these large coyotes (males weigh up to 120lbs) have established themselves as the dominant large predator in eastern Canada and New England, a position it shares with the black bear. While cougars lead solitary lives Eastern coyotes live and hunt in family units, and cougars will avoid confrontation with them. It's not impossible to think that some cougars would choose to migrate further south in search of greener (and coyote-free) pastures. This is one way one could end up in Chicago especially considering that the ice cover on the Great Lakes was much more extensive than average this winter, allowing easy migration.
 
This is one way one could end up in Chicago especially considering that the ice cover on the Great Lakes was much more extensive than average this winter, allowing easy migration.

Karl, thank you so much for that info. It really was interesting. With two police officers citing what they think is a big cat, I'm inclined to believe that they did see a cougar ... regardless of the dog prints.

Anyway, there were some cougar sightings in Wisconsin not too long ago and it wouldn't be far fetched to consider that it migrated further south by land. North Chicago, is not too far from the Wisconsin border.
 
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=163796&src=3

....
It was about 9:30 p.m. when the animal approached nonchalantly, and rubbed against the front of the squad car, according to Schilaita. By then, he was crouched behind the open driver's side door with a gun trained on what he described as "this monstrous thing right in front of me."

"To me it looked like a lion," he said. "I've never been three or four feet away from any animal of that size and stature."

Schilaita said he was stuttering as he alerted the dispatcher. The animal took off as the radio screeched with responses. He didn't fire.

His encounter sparked a quick response as police combed the area near the station at Lewis Avenue near Argonne Drive. Paw prints were found, but the animal eluded searchers.
....
He said only two cougars have been positively identified in Illinois in the past century.

"It's not out of the realm of possibility, (but) it's not very common," he said.

Forest district biologists wonder whether the animal is the same one seen and later positively identified as a cougar earlier this year in Milton, Wis., according to spokeswoman Sue Hawkins.

We live about 3 1/2 hours away from Chicago and last summer there was rumors of a cougar stalking around the rural area where we live. The animal controll people came out and took prints and said it was definitely a cougar but it was never caught. They said it was probably alone and had wondered to far. Also we have had wolf prints found in the last few years as they are migrating further and further. I swear I seen three of them when I was riding my horse a few years back. I had nightmares about wolves for a long time. We see coyotes all the time but these were BIG way bigger than a coyote. Anyway, my dad said if the cougar came near his cattle he would shoot and any wolf to and they better not fine him for killing endangered animals.
 
This is 20-25 miles from North Chicago. I can't imagine that this would be the same animal!

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

A cougar ran loose in Chicago on Monday for the first time since the city's founding in the 19th Century. But by day's end, the animal lay dead in a back alley on the North Side, shot by police who said they feared it was turning to attack.

No one knew where the 150-pound cat came from, though on Saturday Wilmette police had received four reports of a cougar roaming that suburb, roughly 15 miles from the site of Monday's shooting.

Whatever its origin, the 5-foot-long cougar's unlikely journey ended in the Roscoe Village neighborhood, where residents reported sightings throughout the day to the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control. Resident Ben Greene said police cornered the cougar shortly before 6 p.m. in his side yard on the 3400 block of North Hoyne Avenue.
 
37863240.jpg
 
This is 20-25 miles from North Chicago. I can't imagine that this would be the same animal!

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

A cougar ran loose in Chicago on Monday for the first time since the city's founding in the 19th Century. But by day's end, the animal lay dead in a back alley on the North Side, shot by police who said they feared it was turning to attack.

No one knew where the 150-pound cat came from, though on Saturday Wilmette police had received four reports of a cougar roaming that suburb, roughly 15 miles from the site of Monday's shooting.

Whatever its origin, the 5-foot-long cougar's unlikely journey ended in the Roscoe Village neighborhood, where residents reported sightings throughout the day to the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control. Resident Ben Greene said police cornered the cougar shortly before 6 p.m. in his side yard on the 3400 block of North Hoyne Avenue.

This could be the same cougar. Coyotes travel up and down the railroad tracks between North Chicago and Chicago, and Wilmette is one of the towns along the way. Maybe the cougar was traveling along the same route that the coyotes do.
 
Darn. What a beautiful animal. Wish they could have gotten someone in there to trap it and take it to a wild animal refuge, but we don't are not always faced with an ideal situation. Glad no LE was hurt.
 
This could be the same cougar. Coyotes travel up and down the railroad tracks between North Chicago and Chicago, and Wilmette is one of the towns along the way. Maybe the cougar was traveling along the same route that the coyotes do.

Oh, that's a thought. Hopefully, there aren't any others lurking about. :eek:

On the news they showed a clip of an officer walking towards a news camera, when just a few feet behind him, the cougar crossed his path. The officer had no idea. :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
Oh, that's a thought. Hopefully, there aren't any others lurking about. :eek:

On the news they showed a clip of an officer walking towards a news camera, when just a few feet behind him, the cougar crossed his path. The officer had no idea. :eek: :eek: :eek:

hee hee...that waskely cougar
 
Darn. What a beautiful animal. Wish they could have gotten someone in there to trap it and take it to a wild animal refuge, but we don't are not always faced with an ideal situation. Glad no LE was hurt.

This was in a neighborhood stuffed with children. The thought makes my blood run cold.
 
Darn. What a beautiful animal. Wish they could have gotten someone in there to trap it and take it to a wild animal refuge, but we don't are not always faced with an ideal situation. Glad no LE was hurt.

When the cougar was roaming around North Chicago, I talked to two officers, and they said they were not allowed to shoot it unless it attacked them. They said it seemed tame, as if it were a pet.

While, ideally, I'm all for capturing such a beautiful animal instead of shooting it, I think the danger to children is so great that it should have been shot on sight.
 

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