For days after Chicago police shot a cougar to death in Roscoe Village, the websites for our two remaining major newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, kept running the same photos for the big cat's body lying on the concrete, blood running down its fur, over and over and over again.
And now that it's been decided that the cougar's remains will be archived at the Field Museum of Natural History--a place I found creepy as a child, because of all of the preserved animals there, including Bushman the gorilla (who lived at the Lincoln Park Zoo until his death in 1950 and has been on display at the Field ever since) and the man-eating lions known as the Ghost and the Darkness (the same ones whose story was told in that crappy Michael Douglas/Val Kilmer movie)--the two newspaper's websites are running the same photo of the big cat's pelt sitting on a table over and over and over again.
Please, Trib and Times. Stop it. This story is sad enough. The animal should never have come anywhere near this city. Why keep shoving its bullet-riddled corpse in our figurative faces?
Showing posts with label Animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animals. Show all posts
Friday, April 25, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
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.
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.
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