This Week's Second Sign of the Apocalypse

In my previous post about a cougar sighting in my neighborhood on Monday, I concluded that it locked up story of the week honors and "I shudder to think what could possibly top it." Well, Mother Nature chimed in early Friday morning with her major shudder of an answer at around 4:37 am when a 5.2 magnitude earthquake sent a minor rumble through the city. Centered in the southern Illinois town of West Salem, the earthquake was relatively mild but nonetheless the strongest to hit the area since a 5.3 magnitude quake in 1968. It was enough to shake my light fixtures and wake me from slumber, which really isn't that hard to do as I am a very light sleeper to begin with.

So, for those scoring at home, this is a cougar sighting and an earthquake in the same WEEK. Were I living in southern California like my buddy Chris (aka "Our Man in LA" in the blogosphere) or northern California like my sister Elizabeth (aka Liz) this would be no big deal, but this kind of stuff just doesn't happen here in the midwestern city of Chicago. A tornado and a rat sighting, sure. Been there, done that. But this is just flat out weird and ominous and I am starting to feel a bit too much kinship with the Will Smith character in "I am Legend." Maybe it's time to revisit those bomb shelter plans.

Out of the Wild

So, I'm driving home from the train station after work around 6pm last night and all of sudden come upon a gaggle of police cars while driving up Cornelia, a street near my apartment in the Roscoe Village neighborhood on the north side. The blocks are short and I can see police cars literally at every intersection in this normally quiet residential area. There is a police station nearby so I am used to seeing law enforcement in the neighborhood, but not this many cops. Something is definitely going on. As I cross one particular street, Hamilton as I recall, all of a sudden the police rush towards a particular house with their guns drawn. I can't get a really good look at what is going on since I am driving, but my first thought was a hostage situation or something like that.

Little did I know, the cops were rushing to confront a cougar - that's right, a cougar - that was loose in the neighborhood. For those who watch "30 Rock" and saw last week's episode where the network was pushing a new reality show called "MILF Island" I am not talking about that kind of cougar. No, this was not a hot, middle-aged woman on the prowl for teenage boys. Rather, this was an ACTUAL cougar from the wild, weighing in at approximately 150 lbs and, according to a witness, able to scale 6 foot fences with one leap. It may have come as far as 1,000 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota via Wisconsin to its rather unlikely final destination in the city. I know the housing market is tough but damn, cougar, you ain't going to find a better deal on the north side of Chicago than you had living in the woods in the Dakotas.

Unfortunately, the story has a sad ending as the police eventually shot and killed the animal. Apparently, cougars can be difficult to tranquilize (it won't work if you hit bone, for example) and with it being a densely populated urban area the obvious safety risk was there as well. Some were critical of the police decision to shoot the animal, but Mayor Daley made a good point when noting the lawsuit potential for the city had the cougar mauled a human. I must say that encountering a cougar on my way home from work pretty much locks up story of the week honors. I shudder to think what could possibly top it.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

The national pastime enters its second week with a full slate of Major League Baseball games across the country. Optimism for my defending champion Boston Red Sox as well as my fantasy baseball team, the Bad News Blairs, is running rampant. Hopefully this optimism will still be running rampant at the All-Star break, or at least Memorial Day. Living in Chicago, I should also note that this is the 100th (!) anniversary of the last world championship for the Chicago Cubs, the beloved north siders. Can you imagine saying "Wait until next year" for 100 years? I thought 86 years was rough but damn. However, the beauty of baseball is that hope springs eternal at the start of every season. It's the summer romance that eventually breaks your heart, leaves you for the winter, buys a cute new outfit and shows up again in the spring.

In recognition of the opening of baseball version 2008, I wanted to pass along this funny article Presidents, Pierogies and Other Strange Things That Race at Ballparks sent to me by my friend Aeron in North Carolina. It is a history of some of the mascot racing traditions in major and minor league ballparks across the country. As a midwesterner who has made it to Milwaukee for a Brewers game or two, I am very familiar with the famous Klement's Racing Sausages. They got some notoriety 5 years ago when Pittsburgh Pirate Randall Simon smacked the Italian Sausage (aka college student Mandy Block) with his baseball bat, knocked her and another racer to the ground and received a citation for disorderly conduct. Needless to say, ESPN showed that clip a lot.

It is somewhat ironic in this technological age that a number of the mascot races - including the sausages and the racing presidents at Washington Nationals games - evolved from graphics on a scoreboard to actual flesh and blood "people" and not the other way around. In this world of Nintendo Wii, Blackberry, podcasts and virtual reality computer games like "Second Life," it is nice to know that we haven't completely given up on the human element when it comes to our sports-related entertainment. Don't know about you, but if I am going to watch four sausages race down the 3rd base line at a ballgame I demand authenticity.