The Cougar in the Alley

The rumors had been padding through the Chicago suburbs for a few weeks: There was a cougar in the area. Tracks had been found in the snow. Fleeting glimpses had been caught out of the corners of fretful eyes.

Maybe it was just overactive imagination. Maybe it was like those stories about the kangaroo hopping around the city in the '70s, even though no escaped marsupial was ever found. Or the rumor of a panther-like cat prowling the parks and alleys of the West Side; I know one guy who says he saw the cat stalking across a garage roof, and maybe saw what he saw when he saw it--or maybe he didn't.

Then again, maybe it was like the occasional reports of coyotes straying into the city, sometimes making it all the way downtown before being corraled by Animal Control. Last year, a coyote ran through the open door of a Quizno's on Adams and ducked behind the counter. Maybe it wanted some mm mm mm mm mm, toasty. What it got instead was a tranq dart, a muzzle and a trip out of Dodge.

Last weekend, the alleged big cat was said to be in the northern 'burb of Wilmette. The rumors were still just that, but they were growing in number--and growing closer to the city itself.

Yesterday morning, all ceased to be rumor and became fact: Neighbors in Roscoe Village, on the North Side, had spotted the cougar prowling the streets, jumping fences, probably looking for food. Police began combing the neighborhood.

Around 6 p.m., gunshots were heard throughout Roscoe Village. Ordinarily, this might have meant gang activity--maybe yet another child caught in the crossfire of stupid, evil men--or a domestic dispute that had gotten well out of hand. Instead, it was the CPD, putting the big cat down.

Department spokesmen say that there was nothing the police could do, that the cougar was threatening to charge them and they fired in self defense. I don't doubt it. The big cat was probably tired and hungry and more than a little scared. It was cornered and surrounded. No one knows where it came from--it had no tags to indicate that some knothead had taken it as a pet, and only an autopsy can show whether it had any kind of chip or tracking device on its body--or why it came into the city (more food than in Wilmette?). And, of course, some are wondering why no one from Animal Control was standing by to give the cougar a taste of what Mr. Coyote got: A dart, a nap, a trip to somewhere far away. Those same people probably wouldn't be asking such questions if the cougar had snagged someone's chiuahua or child or elderly parent; they'd probably have pulled the trigger themselves.

Instead, we get photo after photo on the news of the cougar's body lying in an alley, blood running from beneath it, life long gone from a place the big cat should never have been.

Maybe it could have ended another way. But it didn't.