This is not the first one to turn up in an urban area, assuming this turns out to be wild. Check the Eastern Cougar net. Generally they wander in when its dark and quiet, then get disoriented when the city wakes up and can’t find their way back out. We had one turn up in Kansas City and it got hit on the interstate. The chances of a lion wandering into Chicago was infinitesimal, but the chances of there being a second or third lion in this area shrinks even more. Lions are loners and except for a very brief mating period, they don’t travel together and they don’t want another of their kind nearby.

Everyone really criticizes the cops for shooting this one. You’ve watched too many nature shows where they tranquilize them. Those footages are done in optimal conditions and after all the outtakes have hit the cutting room floor. If you have ever dealt with with a wild animal like a cougar, bear or wolf up close and personal, it is not as easy to tranquilize or capture it as you might think. There was no practical way for CPD to corner or track this cat and wait for a tranquilizer even if they could get one.

Furthermore if the lion was fully armed (assuming it was wild) it was a matter of time before hunger drove it kill pets or worse, someone’s kid. Actually, I think it would have eventually been hit by a car trying to find its way out. Yeah, capture would have been nice but odds were against this lion all the way. If it was a released captive, the owner needs to do some serious jail time.

I saw someone lamenting that this was a shame because there are so few lions left. Maybe in Illinois, but there is no shortage of lions in North America. The population in the west is expanding and the surplus is spilling out over the plains states into the Mississippi Valley and northern Great Lakes. In the 1960s, the western states counted their lions by the hundreds. Now they count them by the thousands.
They are coming to some woods near you…soon.

They say they searched from the ground, too, but it really doesn’t sound like they put a real coordinated effort into it to me. Cougars (and cats in general) are expert at hiding. I tried to take my housecat to the vet once and had to cancel the appointment. Three hours later she crawled out of a closet I had already searched thoroughly twice. Likely they could have walked right by the cougar and never have seen it.

Hopefully another death may be averted here.

IF this is true, of course.