Carmi mercury

The latest cougar sighting comes from Stickney, an inner ring suburb mostly known for its massive wastewater treatment plant. I'm guessing it was actually a stray house cat looking for some radioactive fish bones.

Elsewhere, loons and ticks are returning to Minnesota. The loons haven't been able to leave southern Minnesota because the lakes to the north still are icebound at this late date.

Our weather has had its share of oddities along with the typical 20-degree north-south temperature gradients across the area. Yesterday's statewide low of 51 was in Carmi, 341 miles due south of here. Today's statewide high of 86 degrees was then 82 miles north of Carmi in Robinson. Ah, southeastern Illinois.

Spring morning

Today brought mild springlike weather and stops at Gompers Park and LaBagh Woods on Chicago's Northwest Side. Perhaps the highlight was the first blue-gray gnatcatcher of the season. Either that or the people who fooled me into thinking a prothonotary warbler was present by playing a tape of a prothonotary warbler.

Geological madness

Early this morning, an earthquake registering 5.2 on the Richter scale struck the Midwest. The quake was centered in West Salem, Ill., 200 miles south of Chicago. There was a little bit of damage from the temblor in southern Illinois. In Chicago, buildings swayed and people woke to the rumbling of the earth. The New Madrid Fault, named after a town in southeastern Missouri, is a seismic zone that extends into the Wabash River valley.

Elsewhere in this increasingly wild metropolis, reports surfaced of another cougar. Naturally, there were going to be copycat sightings, pun not intended, of a million cougars after the one found on the North Side. Every tomcat in Alsip is going to be identified as a puma. I stand by my theory that this was the same cougar that was seen on the North Shore a few days ago.

Also, tonight, there are two crows roosting in the maples in front of our building.

Spring fever

Today, after a long, dreary winter and spring, the temperature touched 70 at O'Hare and Midway. It was the first 70 in six months. With strong southerly winds at their backs, spring-fever hordes flocked to the lakefront path.

Felid madness

The North Side cougar was all over the local and national news yesterday. Officials are uncertain as to whether the big cat was the same one that was seen in Wilmette and North Chicago (I, for one, think it is the same one). The mayor and police superintendent defended the police officers' shooting of the cornered cat. It was indeed a sad end, but I ultimately have to agree on this one. They had no choice. Having a cougar running around a crowded city is terrifying--the cougar was easily leaping 6-foot fences according to reports. And a police officer who thinks the cougar is charging or about to charge has to take action. This is an animal that can chase down a Leporid after all. Whether a tranquilizer was available is another question.

Getting birdy

I can't seem to walk outside these days without hearing a call note from a migratory bird species. If it's not a white-throated sparrow, it's a dark-eyed junco or some other songbird headed north. One day it was a yellow-rumped warbler, clinging to the side of The Salvation Army building a few blocks away. Sunday, it was a junco in the alley. One other notable sighting: a black-crowned night heron braving the mid-40s temperatures over Lake Shore Drive yesterday.

Cat fever

In perhaps the most insane story ever posted here, a puma has been killed on the North Side of Chicago. Visitors may recall that previous posts discussing the cougar outbreak in the Upper Midwest. A couple months back, a cougar was located in southern Wisconsin near the town of Milton. Two weeks ago, a cougar was reported about 33 miles north of here in North Chicago. Then reports came in yesterday of a cougar about nine miles north of here in Wilmette. Finally, one of the big cats was sighted today 3 miles from here in the neighborhood of Roscoe Village.

The leading theory is that cougars are moving east out of the Black Hills of South Dakota. The animals are growing in numbers in Minnesota and now Wisconsin. These "wandering males" are attracted by the abundant deer population. One wonders what the killing's animal cruelty implications will be as the video of bulletproof-vested cops shooting the feline in a city alley is on the Web.