OMG! Waukegan ate my baby!

A blog by some random guy who just happens be from and live in Waukegan, Illinois U.S.A. Nothing more complicated than that.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

News Sun Hacks and Cougar Massacre

First of all, I'd like to thank the News Sun for doing a hack job in their County Talk section. Just because it provides freedom of anonymity (is that the word?) for submission, that shouldn't be sufficient context for ruining the messages of what is opined in a public forum. Sure I may give up some anonymity by criticizing it in this blog, but who actually reads this? (Not like I get comments nor fan/hate mail.)


So, here's my new letter to them about that (think they'll hack it too?):


If there was ad copy that said "Free wallet with purchase of 3 pants or more" and the only part the News Sun prints is "Free wallet", don't you think the company advertizing would be mad? Anyhow, that's exactly what's being done with the County Talk letters. If you can't avoid ruining the context via hacky editing, why bother printing it at all?

This is the craptastic editing where they pared a recent letter I submitted down to something that sounds rather silly:

So far, no cougar yet. Still there's plenty of wildlife to be seen here in Waukegan. What I have seen so far: domestic cats, squirrels, opossums, skunks, rabbits, deer, coyotes, foxes, and a badger.

Here's the full letter, hopefully this makes a lot more sense:

After hearing about the cougar sightings again in a few years, I'd figure I'd keep an eye out for it. So far, no cougar yet. Still there's plenty of wildlife to be seen here in Waukegan. What I have seen so far: domestic cats, squirrels, opossums, skunks, rabbits, deer, coyotes, foxes, and a badger. (Yes, there's actually a badger around these parts.)

As for the cougar, if there actually is one - is not the "city du jour" cougar, as some people would like to believe. It would be a Lake County cougar, as large cats roam a fairly large territory once they settle down. Also if the cougar bothers nobody, nobody should seek out to bother it. It's true that reports of mountain lion attacks in western states are sensationalized. However, once the population of such cats that overlaps human settled areas in western states is considered, those attacks are fairly rare. More often than not, a cougar that attacks people or their pets is sick or injured. I'd figure that the Lake County cougar is fairly healthy, avoids people (based on few sightings and reports of its behavior when it is sighted), has plenty of open green space to travel (forest preserves, powerline runs, rivers, lakefront, railways), and more than enough deer and small game animals to keep it happy. So unless it starts exhibiting signs of agressive behavior, the best thing to do would be to leave it alone.

Anyhow, the cougar in question is no more. (Or so I would have reason to believe.) Some cops in a north shore town proved they were bigger pussies than the mountain lion they massacred. The cat was cornered into an alley (I'm presuming they had their car and spotlighted it. Probably revving the engine to further intimidate the poor thing.) Then they shot it a total of 16 times! Really, is that necessary? Anyhow shooting an animal repeatedly from the safety of a car while hiding behind the glare of a spotlight doesn't really make you macho or a hero in my book. In fact it shows that you're just an exceptionally cowardly pussy and desparately trying to compensate for it by killing an animal that really wasn't bothering anyone. (Not like there was an escalation in missing pet reports or the such.) And I thought it was neat that our greenways and forest preserves could actually support an apex predator. Now I'm feeling more sorry that it was ever spotted by people to begin with.

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