In one of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone Halloween monologues he reminisced about how the wild imaginations of he and his young friends could get taken with the scary thought that cougars were hiding in the low-hanging branches of the trees along their trick-or-treating path. Of course, he said, you knew that cougars were more afraid of you than you were of them, but what if it was an old, sick cougar…an old, sick cougar with nothing to lose?!
I thought of that today when I saw the Fox story about Chicago police shooting and killing a 150-pound cougar on the city’s North side. I guess a 150 pound cougar doesn’t sound like it would be too old or sick to me, and if it really had nothing to lose it would have gone for the South side of Chicago and the baddest part of town. Still, it’s something to keep in mind if you’re ever out trick-or-treating again.
