Apr 14 2008
More Cougar Sightings Near Chicago
Several weeks ago, a flurry of cougar sightings filled the Chicagoland press. Well, it’s happened again. This time residents of Wilmette saw a possible cougar near a CTA station. Sun-Times excerpts and link:
WILMETTE — Police are conducting an animal investigation after residents in north suburban Wilmette reported seeing an animal believed to be a cougar.
Wilmette police received calls from four different residents Sunday morning reporting an animal each believed to be a cougar in the 300 block of 3rd Street near the CTA’s Linden station, according to a Wilmette police release.
Officers searched the area, but were unable to locate the animal.
The reports are similar to recent possible cougar sightings in North Chicago, where paw prints were found.
North Chicago police have teamed with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and Lake County Forest Preserve officers to track and apprehend the animal.
Police remind residents not to approach the animal and immediately call 911.
Here’s the Trib version:
“I’ve seen deer, opossums, raccoons, foxes and coyotes in this neighborhood,” said Gail Teague, a Wilmette resident who lives on 3rd Street. “But a cougar? Now that would be unusual.”
So unusual that there have only been two confirmed cougars found in Illinois in more than a century. In 2000, a train struck and killed a male cougar in Randolph County and in 2004, a bow hunter in Mercer County killed a 95-pound male. Before that, the last confirmed sighting in Illinois of a wild cougar was in southern Illinois in 1862.
But wildlife experts say there is some preliminary evidence that cougars are prowling eastward from their normal habitats west of the Rocky Mountains. In January, a trapper in a Wisconsin town 25 miles from the Illinois border came face-to-face in a barn with a big cat that fled into the woods. Officials tested blood the animal left behind and confirmed it was a cougar.
At the end of March, several North Chicago residents, including a police officer, reported cougar sightings. Officials searched, but found nothing. They did discover the paw print of a “very big cat.”