Wild Screaming Cat Sounds Last Weekend

[john brennan]

Anybody know anything about the day and a half of screaming cat sounds off of flowage road and grandview, back in the bay by the red a frame on the corner. It was a screaming noise that sounded like a big cat. Cougar possibly? Large bobcat? Maybe it was caught in a trap or fell out of a tree and broke it's back. It was pretty loud and my lab was freaked out. Blue, you might have heard it. It was last tues and wed.

[Birdoguy]

A cougar was sited by one of my neighbors on 6/29 on Popko's circle, about a half mile north of Wilson Lake. I had one in my yard about two years ago as well.
John

[BlueRanger]

We left Monday afternoon, and didn't hear or see anything unusual over the weekend. But it reminds me of something that happened the first season after my parents bought our lot, almost 20 years ago. My buddy and I decided to go up there for a weekend and camp on it. The second night, we were startled awake by a blood-curdling scream that sounded more or less like a child being knifed to death. We never found out what it was, but it scared the you-know-what out of us. At times like that, I always imagine myself in my sleeping bag looking a lot like a big burrito.

[radar]

While driving home from our Springstead cabin last year over the 4th of July weekend, a large cougar ran in front of our truck about 75 yards away. We were driving west on Hwy. 70 and were just east of Draper, WI. My daughter and I noticed a brown colored something in the ditch so I slowed down thinking it was a deer. I told my daughter to keep her eyes open to see what it was. Just then, the cougar appeared and ran north to south right in front of our truck. What a sight! Its tail was as long as it's body and had a pug shaped nose. Thinking we were going to see a deer, you can imagine our surprise as this large cat ran in front of us. I contacted the WI DNR but was told that without a picture, they would could not validated my sighting and maintained that there were no cougars in WI. I beg to differ.

[MuskieRandy]

I'm surprised the DNR is still saying there are no cougars in WI. I just read an article in the newspaper 2 weeks ago that said they have been sighted sporadically around the state.

My wife and I went for a bike ride around Popko's circle last week. Didn't hear a thing and made it out alive, hehe. Nice road for bike rides BTW. Super smooth pavement and very scenic!

[BlueRanger]

http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/er/mammals/cougar/

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/environment/article_f6c42aee-c54a-5937-b5ab-b87461d21fe9.html

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/96625504.html

[ski2313]

There's been one regularly sighted just north of Green Bay for a few months now.. It's been in the local news (GB) a few times and I recall reading about the same cat in a recent magazine whilst using the commode at TFFr00k's house. A nice Kohler commode, too.

[George]

I think this was the story that finally convinced the DNR that there just might be some cougars in Wisconsin. Of course if you go to the right bars in Milwaukee, there's a lot of cougar sightings there too! ;)

A large cat believed to be a cougar was shot and killed by police Monday in an alley on Chicago's North Side.

Chicago police said an officer shot and killed a 150-pound cougar. Several residents reported seeing the cat, which was more than 5 feet long, earlier Monday.

"He just zoomed across the street, hurdled a 6-foot fence like nothing," resident Frank Hirschmann told ABC 7 Chicago.

Authorities said the animal's body will be checked for any markings, microchips or tags that would show if it is owned by anyone.

"He leaped the fence into the alley where two officers shot and killed the cougar in the back of the garage here," said Chicago police Cmdr. John Kenny.

"Initially, the animal charged at officers, shots were fired at the animal (and) the animal ran to a yard," Kenny said.

"The animal is very excited, it's disturbed, it's scared. It could have attacked a person if it was cornered," Kenny said.

"How long has this thing been in the neighborhood? I mean, this is Roscoe Village. … This is the city of Chicago," Roscoe Village resident Ted Wallace said.

Residents of the North Side village seemed just as concerned about gunshots in their neighborhood as much as they were about the cougar.

"I would say there were probably three sets of shots, six shots in each set," resident Shannon Johnston told ABC 7 Chicago.

Where it came from and whether it is the same animal seen recently in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois was not immediately known.

"This doesn't look like it's a very thin cat. It looks like it's got good flesh on it," Mark Rosenthal, of Chicago Animal Care and Control, the group that is performing an necropsy on the animal, told ABC 7 Chicago.

"It was eating well on some level, wherever it was," Rosenthal said.

"They should be able to tell if this is a wild cougar based on the DNA tests and the necropsy," according to Mark Dowling, co-founder of the Cougar Network, a nonprofit research organization.

Dowling said he was not surprised a cougar could live in this area. He thought there may be two possibilities: that it was a captive animal on the loose or a potential "disperser" from a western population.

He said he did not think there was a wild breeding population in the area, as the nearest populations are in the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota.

In any case, there will be several wildlife experts interested in the findings.

Reports of a large cat circulated in two Lake County communities over the past few weeks, and in both cases, police officers were among the eyewitnesses.

A cast of a paw print gathered in North Chicago from several sightings reported March 28, later was identified by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources as being canine in nature.

In that instance, a police officer reported that a large cat came and rubbed up against his squad car as he was writing a report in the police station parking lot. The officer said it was within a few feet and that he had it in his gunsight, but it was scared off by radio chatter and he didn't fire.

On April 3, a resident of Round Lake Park about 14 miles to the west, reported seeing a large cat in his back yard. A responding police officer saw it as well. An evidence team was called but could not obtain any paw prints.

Although the number of reports were few, especially compared to the hundreds received in 2004, their nature prompted the Lake County Health Department on April 4 to ask residents -- if they were at a safe distance -- to take pictures or video if they spotted the animal.

The department also said the animal that had been sighted "appears to be afraid of humans." No pictures or video have been submitted.

The cougar watch was dormant for about a week until last Saturday, when Wilmette police said they received reports from four different residents, who said they saw an animal each believed to be a cougar near the CTA's Fourth and Linden Station. The animal was not located. Wilmette is about 35 miles from Round Lake Park.

Cougars can range hundreds of miles but typically roam areas of 125 to 175 square miles, the Lake County Health Department reported, meaning it could be nearly anywhere in the area.

Authorities in Wisconsin also have been interested in the Lake County sightings, as genetic test results positively identified an animal seen in January as being a male cougar of North American origin.

While those genetics did not eliminate the possibility the cat had been captive, "it does make it more likely that the cougar is completely wild," according to Adrian Wydeven, mammal ecologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

That was the first confirmed cougar sighting in Wisconsin in 100 years.

A track found several weeks later in Elkhorn, Wis., also was identified as being that of a cougar and was thought to be the same animal.

In Illinois, the existence of cougars have been confirmed only twice since the 1860s -- one in 2000 in Chester and one in 2004 in Mercer County.

There are no state rules or regulations protecting cougars in Illinois because they were not considered native to Illinois when the state wildlife code was written, according to Natural Resources spokesman Chris McCloud.

[Joe V Jr]

Well, I don't usually post and would never have posted this if it wasn't preceeded by this string. I have a place on Trude and was headed up from Oconomowoc with my wife and dog on Friday, June 25th. I don't believe in UFO's or sasquatch for that matter, but we did see a very large cat that night on Popkos Circle East about 1-1.5 miles from the golf course (directly across from John White's property). I am not cat expert (I don't even like the small ones) and am not sure what it was. I can tell you that it was in middle of the road so we both saw it from about 150 feet away and it was a fair amount larger than my 85 pound Golden (much longer, but not as tall). My wife did report it to the DNR. For what it's worth. Joe

[The Tiny Fisherman]

This got way off track, but I'm sure what you are hearing is a Screech Owl. We've hear it many time on our side of the flowage. Many people are saying its a cat, but it isn't. We've seen it as it does its call and it sounds like a child in distress or a cat screaming.

As for large cats, they are here and we've seen them. Some day I'll get a picture of one. Yesterday I saw a big black wolf on FF, just east of Swamp Creek Road.

See ya on the water,

[Freak]

I've heard the same sound 3 times now. At first I did think it was a screech owl, but the owl sounds different. I think it may have been a fox. At least what I heard sounded just like a fox.

Check out this video with some fox sounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6NuhlibHsM

[BlueRanger]

Here's another link to various fox sounds...

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Fox_Sounds_audio.aspx

#1 sounds a lot like what we heard years ago. I also listened to a bunch of recorded owl screeches, and it wasn't that.

There's a whole family of them running around the point this year. Last time I drove up, four or five of them were standing in the middle of Flowage Road just north of Grandview when I arrived around dusk, and ran off as I approached. They looked to be close to full size, so maybe they were born last year.

There's nice collection of bobcat sounds on the same site, and they sound pretty intimidating for their size!