My very first blog. Ever. I thought today was a great day to do it because of the newspaper and TV news about cougar sitings in North Chicago, Illinois. Not too far from the third largest city in the US, a mountain lion, panther, or cougar, as Native Americans called them, was seen by several people yesterday in a highly inhabited suburban town. There were tracks in snow that have been identified by officials!
I have always loved wild animals. My name is Urban Woodswalker because I roam the 1000s of forest preserve acres near my home. White tail deer, Blue Herons, white egrets, red tail hawks, are just a few of the fauna I am lucky to see on a regular basis besides the usual gulls, squirrels, skunks, raccoons, and Gulls. Thrilling treats are to come across coyotes or beaver at work...but that seldom happens as both are usually quite shy of humans. A rare occurrence was the Peregrine Falcon that whooshed onto my balcony last month to capture and eat a bird at one of the bird feeders. WOW!
Cougars? They are migrating east ward again. I know that many states shoot and kill them when found in urban areas. The thought is that the cougar would have lost their fear of humans, and pose an extremely dangerous threat not only to pets, but to humans. Some states allow hunting cougar with a special permit. Yuck. I cannot imagine that at all - such a magnificent creature. Illinois is a state that does not have Cougars on the endangered species list because they say they don't exist here...even though there have been numerous sitings and even 2 dead ones found in the southern part of the state. If you read the links below you can learn much more about the cougar and how hums exterminated it in most of the eastern and midwestern states in the late 1800s.
I wish the cougar well. I hope it finds the rivers and forest preserves and can live a peaceful uninterrupted life there forever. Just leave it alone... :-)
Read all about the incident here:
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/867240,5_1_WA29_COUGAR_S1.article
http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/features/2004july/cougar.html
HEAR a real live COUGAR Scream/Growl here:
The pendant shown is made from a 1999 US postage stamp, and 2 recycled aluminum pull tabs. Its called the "Cougar Pendant" and is available for sale in my shop here:
http://urbanwoodswalker.etsy.com/
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