Wow! The variety of Chicago wildlife just keeps growing! Since my last city wildlife post, we've spotted a coyote in our neighborhood, opossums, raccoons, a huge hawk eating it's captured woodpecker and did get verification that indeed red fox do inhabit the city limits. Now this in my old neighborhood...there have been several cougar sightings in Illinois and Wisconsin over the past year, including the Chicagoland area.
It will be interesting to see how all of these sightings develop over the next few years in terms of origin of these animals. Many believe that overcrowding of western habitats is pushing the cats back east. Some think all of these sightings are escaped or released illegal pets. My unofficial guess is that it's both.
For more information on cougars (aka pumas, panthers, mountain lions and catamounts) in the Midwest visit Nature Almanac.
UPDATE 4/16: based on necropsy results, veterinarians believe this was truly a wild animal and not an escaped captive. It was a young male, perhaps pushed out of his home territory by older males.
UPDATE 4/17: news report this morning states a Forest Preserve Police Officer spotted a cougar chasing two deer near Skokie Lagoons and shortly after, two joggers reported to the same officer that they had spotted the cat. This was after the cougar was shot in the city limits. I was so close to calling in sick today to bike up there to see if I could spot it...this is along the North Branch Trail that I talked about in my Big City Nature post.
UPDATE 4/30: from the Chicago Tribune: DNA test results show that the cougar police shot April 16 on the North Side of Chicago was the same animal that left blood drops in southern Wisconsin in January, Cook County animal control officials said Wednesday. The cougar's genes link it to a population from the Black Hills of South Dakota, according to Wisconsin wildlife officials. The animal's long journey apparently took it through North Chicago and Wilmette, where people reported seeing a cougar after the animal left Wisconsin but before it arrived in the big city.
2 comments:
wow! What a picture, would definitely be scary!
I wish they could have tranquilized the cat, although it's not my back yard that the cat was roaming around in.
They've been tracking wolf packs in Wisconsin; we heard them howling way up north a few years ago. It'll be interesting to see how far south they move.
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