You know, I’ve always been worried about a “The Day After Tomorrow” type of disastrous event coming down on us - Global Warming biting us in the ass in the form of a super snowstorm that freezes the whole northern part of the planet. I always thought that living in the Midwest wasn’t too bad - all we really have to worry about are tornadoes and the occasional flooding in the basement.
…until last week.
That’s when a cougar was shot in Chicago. Not a suburb of Chicago - in the city, the very middle of the city. For the last couple months, there have been reports of people who had thought they had seen a cougar or large feline prowling about. Turns out that in the months before that, people in Wisconsin were reporting the very same thing. I’m sure if we made a map “Law & Order”-style, we’d see a trail of little red marks showing the path of the cougar based on people’s reports. But yes, the cops cornered a cougar in an alley of a residential neighborhood and took the cat down in a shower of bullets. I feel a bit bad for the poor lost kitty, but I’ve read that even in California they’re hesitant to try capturing wayward cougars because they can be pretty unpredictable and hard to tranquilize.
So yeah….a COUGAR. The only wildlife I’ve ever been scared of in these parts are raccoons, because they have rabies. When I lived in California, we visited some friends out in La Brea who had said that they’d seen a coyote, and had heard stories of cougars. But that’s Los Angeles - they have mountains there. A cougar is a mountain lion. We have no mountains here! We are plains people!
Craziness.
You know what’s even crazier?
We had an earthquake on Friday. Well, not Chicago, but the epicenter was 200 miles away, close enough for people in Chicago to feel it. Ironically, although for the 2 nights before it I’d been awake at 4am (check my twitters), Friday morning I was sound asleep in bed, oblivious to any rocking or shaking. I was pretty disappointed that I had missed it, because the only other time I had experienced an earthquake was when I was in California (though I recall feeling one when I was a kid, but I think I imagined it). It was a pretty hefty earthquake, measuring a 5.2. Fortunately, although some people were shaken up (hardee har har), no one was injured.
I was working on Friday, thinking how I had missed it, when I felt the familiar rolling and swaying. By then, though I had thought it was wishful thinking. Since I live on a busy street, the house often shakes when trucks pass by. I had thought that I was just imagining the earthquake, and that it was just a truck driving by. I later checked the news and read that what I had felt was actually an aftershock.
What’s going on with Chicago? I feel like I’m in LA again! What’s next - mudslides, brush fires and an increased number of boob jobs?
Tags: Whine and Cheese, Cool Link by Yano
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