Wild cougars haven’t stalked the Illinois prairies for more than a century, but nearly 50 people believe they’ve spotted something big and catlike roaming Lake County since February.
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In the last few weeks, one or possibly two cougars were reported in a back yard in Antioch, crossing a forest preserve bicycle path and crouching by the edge of a cornfield. Some schools have kept children indoors during recess, and the county has issued warnings to keep pets in the house.
But so far, two trappers, horseback riders and a pack of foxhounds haven’t found the elusive animal, prompting suspicions that the wily critter may not be a cougar at all.
The Lake County Health Department recently hired Wayne Russell, a bear and bobcat tracker from Fox Lake, to try to catch the animal. It has been frustrating, said Russell, who hopes the critter isn’t staying in one place.
“If they don’t move, we ain’t finding them,” he said.
A few hours after the most recent sighting Tuesday near Wadsworth, Russell raced in that direction after getting a frantic call about a woman following a cougar in her car. It turned out she was chasing a coyote.
Such false alarms come as no surprise to Mike DeCapita, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in East Lansing, Mich.
“By and large, in the eastern part of the United States, most of these sightings are mistaken identity,” DeCapita said. “It just happens over and over and over again.”
Even so, cougar sightings seem to be on the rise in the Midwest, with some of the animals believed to be moving east across the plains from their habitat in states such as California and Colorado, experts say.
A cougar was killed by a train Downstate in June 2000, said Clay Nielsen, director of scientific research for the Eastern Cougar Network, a non-profit group that documents cougars in the Midwest and eastern part of the country. The death was the first documented cougar fatality in the state in 140 years, said Nielsen, a wildlife biologist with the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
Cougars haven’t lived in Illinois since the mid-19th Century, when farmers and hunters drove them out. The closest cougar population to Illinois is in South Dakota. But in the western United States, they roam the rugged mountain country freely, DeCapita said. In Southern California this year, a bicyclist was killed and another seriously injured when a cougar attacked them.
Wildlife officials believe the Lake County cougar–if it exists–may be an escaped pet. If the animal is cornered or treed, officials hope to tranquilize and transport it to a wildlife sanctuary in Wisconsin.
Famous for their stealth, cougars can weigh more than 160 pounds and reach about 8 feet from their nose to the tip of their long tail. They have rounded ears and are usually tan.
Though sightings remain rare, encounters between cougars and humans may become more common as the animals show they are increasingly comfortable around suburban residents who move into their habitat, wildlife officials say.
“Suburbia has become a bizarre kind of wildlife refuge,” said David Baron, who wrote “The Beast in the Garden,” a book about the resurgence of cougars in suburban areas. “The animals are … becoming very comfortable with us because we’re certainly not shooting them in the suburbs and we’re not even scaring them away.”
With 25,000 acres of forest preserve along the Des Plaines River, which officials believe the animal may be following, it’s possible a large cat could find food, fresh water and a safe haven, some officials say.
“I’m sure that there are large enough tracts up there that a cat probably could get by and survive without being seen for a while,” said Joe Rogus, a wildlife biologist for the state Department of Natural Resources.
Residents who reported the sightings are positive they saw a cougar, possibly two. A high school biology teacher made plaster casts of an unusually large paw print found in his back yard in Antioch last month. And late last week, an Iowa man took a murky snapshot in a Lindenhurst back yard of what he said were two large mountain lions retreating into the woods.
In every account, the description is about the same–an animal between 4 and 6 feet long, gray or tan, and with a long tail.
After Tuesday’s sighting, wildlife officials on horseback, accompanied by a team of foxhounds, converged on a Wadsworth horse farm.
Nearby, children at Millburn School in Wadsworth were kept indoors for recess. Principal Gary Cybul said they entertained themselves by swapping tall tales about the mysterious mountain lion.
“There are lots of stories going around,” he said. “Kids using their imagination.”
Midday, shortly after the children returned to the playground, Lindenhurst Police Chief Jack McKeever warned Cybul of a more recent report nearby.
Alan Caswell, 64, of unincorporated Antioch, said the cat had been hiding in a hedge that separated a culvert from a cornfield near Lindenhurst. Authorities who searched the field later found tracks about the size of an adult’s fist, McKeever said.
“In my honest opinion, based on the number of sightings and the consistency of information, I believe there are probably two or possibly more large cat animals–possibly of the cougar or puma species–somewhere in the area,” the chief said.
Animal control officials disposed of scat samples collected from yards where neighbors allegedly saw the cougar, after veterinarians told them tests wouldn’t prove what animal left them. Plaster casts of tracks taken from that same location were sent to Springfield for testing.
In the meantime, officials are establishing criteria for a report to be substantiated: Two calls must come in from the same location and authorities must find fresh tracks.
Russell is not the only one trying to corner the cougar. Ron Flug, a professional dog trainer and avid hunter from Antioch, said he hopes to put the saga to rest. Recruited by neighbors in Antioch who believe the animal is roaming their subdivisions, he has set at least a dozen traps around the village.
“I want to get closure on this,” he said. “It is causing a lot of disturbance and disruption around here.”
But for every believer like Flug, there is a naysayer like Larry Leffingwell, manager of Tempel Farms, near Wadsworth, where a woman walking her dog said she saw the cougar early Tuesday.
“This is getting out of control,” Leffingwell said. “I believe there is just no cougar.”
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Even Russell says he wonders what’s out there.
Arriving at the site in McDonald Woods Forest Preserve where police told him the cougar was seen crossing the bike path on Tuesday, he parked his truck, leashed Buck, his red-and-white spotted hound, trudged down the path and disappeared into the thicket.
Fifteen minutes later, dog and tracker emerged. No cougar.
As he took one more futile spin across another field, Russell mused, “How many people say they’ve seen flying saucers?”
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Cougar sightings in Lake County
The Lake County Health Department has received numerous reports of cougar sightings by residents last month. Health department officials are urging residents to avoid heavily wooded areas.
COUGAR FACTS
Habitat: Rocky canyons, tropical rain forests,
prairies, deserts, forests
Range: North and South America
Length: 7-9 feet Weight: 80-230 pounds
Life span: 15-20 years
Diet: Deer, elk and small mammals
ENCOUNTERING A COUGAR
– Pick up children immediately.
– Do not approach it. Give the cougar an avenue for escape.
– Do not run; this can trigger an attack.
– Back away without turning your back on it.
– Do all you can to look bigger. Don’t hide or crouch down.
Sources: Lake County Health Department, ESRI, GDT
baiduhai/Haeyoun Park and Phil Geib