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.