Animal Crossing
As I walked home from the el last night, I noticed something strange. Two police cars turned their sirens off and turned down my street at a fairly rapid pace.
“Huh. That’s weird.” I thought, and turned down my block. There, I noticed two cop cars driving very slowly down the cross-alleys. I kept walking toward our apartment, and saw a neighbor standing on his porch, talking to a neighbor across the street. I didn’t hear much of what they were saying, but did hear “bobcat.”
As I walked past one of the neighbors, I asked him, “Did he just say ‘bobcat?’”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess that’s what the cops are looking for.” He pointed to a patrolman walking across the street, “See? There he is, with his gun drawn.”
Sure enough, a patrolman was walking down the street, gun drawn, talking to an officer in a car keeping pace with him as he walked. “I hear dogs barking over there,” the walking cop said to the one in the car, pointing to the alley behind the houses just across the street from our apartment.
Not wanting to get between a drawn gun and a wild bobcat, I hustled myself into our building pretty quick.
For the next half-hour or so, after Mr. Martini came home and we got dinner started, I kept peeking out the windows to watch the Great Bobcat Hunt of 2008 taking place on our street. I was a total Mrs. Kravitz, making no effort to be discreet as I ran from window to window to see what was going on.
At one point, 5 or 6 officers must have had the cat cornered 2 houses down from ours. I watched out the window as they all pointed their guns at the side yard toward the backyard, then they all started moving and running as the animal no doubt escaped over a fence and around the corner to the next block.
From there, I couldn’t really see what happened. At one point there was a helicopter hovering over the neighborhood, and I saw neighbors running around with cameras and camcorders. Slowly, the 8 or so cruisers left the scene. I figured the bobcat was cornered or gone. We ate dinner, and watched a movie, and I didn’t think to look anything up online until around 10 or so last night.
Dudes. It wasn’t a bobcat. It was a freaking COUGAR. The police shot and killed it when it charged them. Here’s the Chicago Tribune article.
I still can’t believe there was a cougar in my neighborhood – hell, on my street! That’s just crazy. I can’t help but feel bad for it, since it was so far out of its natural environment, and probably just wanted to go home. I’m a little stunned that animal control wasn’t there to stun it and move it – the chase seemed to go on for about 40 minutes, which I figure would be enough time to get animal control officers on the scene.
Anyway, that was my exciting Monday night. Now you know what my Twitter updates were talking about. Crazy, crazy, crazy night.
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It didn’t seem fair that they killed it. After all, there are a lot more police than there are cougars.
Wow! That was in your block? I too feel bad for it.. and dude, forget animal control… as we all know, the cops have their tazers (spl) and are pretty happy to use them on people… so why not try to subdue the poor thing without killing it and then getting the proper people (animal control? people from the zoo?) to see about releasing it… No one in the media (and I haven’t read the Tribune article, so maybe they do) has brought up these questions… blah! But it is really amazing that it got so far into the city… kinda like that time there was a … coyote at a Jimmy Johns in the Loop last year..
So, there’s been this uproar against the cops who killed the cougar. Daley comes out and chastises the critics, saying something to the effect of “I love animals, too, blah blah, but a wild animal in a residential area is a recipe for disaster, blah blah.” And I’m thinking, “Yeah, but so are cops running around with guns out in a residential area.” After four cops (four!) opened fire on the cougar, a neighber reported that his air conditioner had been shot like three times. So, I guess the possibility of a random bullet flying through a window and killing someone never entered their pea-sized brains? Like I said, way more cops than cougars. They should have done what Beowulf did. Get butt naked and take the cougar down like a man – hand to hand. So to speak.
Just because an older woman is out on a booty call doesn’t give the cops the right to shoot her. Oh, wait…wrong kind of cougar.
I am totally freaked out that it happened on your block.
They shot it? And they were running around a neighborhood with guns drawn?
Man. That is so…ick.