This Is Not Pretty!

Not very many things frighten me, but this is one of them.

Here is a picture of a cougar shot in Southeast Minnesota.


The fellow holding the big cat is six feet tall and weighs 220 pounds if that helps to put the cat's size into perspective.


Now, one might say, if it is from SE Minnesota why would you be concerned since you live in South central Minnesota?

About a week ago, our nearest neighbor called and said that he had just looked outside his back window facing the woods and there was a cougar in his backyard. Three years ago when our son Andy was living at home he spotted the eyes of a cougar on the edge of our woods. two nights later he walked out of the garage and there was a cougar sitting on our driveway.

To me, That is frightening!





Cougar sightings are getting more common in our area. Someone about a mile from us has one of those motion sensing cameras that snapped a picture of a cougar on their property about a month ago.
A few years ago there were confirmed sightings of a cougar in a wooded area within the city limits of North Mankato, MN, just a few miles from us.

Here is something I found online relating that incident in town:

I am from Albert Lea, Minnesota. I read your article telling of many sightings of Cougar in Illinois. I just thought you would like to know that there are several sightings of cougars in Minnesota, too. My daughter lives in North Mankato, Minnesota and she had an encounter with a large cougar on October 16, 2004. It was reported to the DNR and local police and subsequently aired on the local television station, on the radio and the subject of front page articles for two editions of the Mankato Free Press.

Since the public has been made aware of the latest sighting...there have been many reports in the same area within the past year or so. In the news articles were stories from a vet that treated a horse for "large cat" injuries and a farmer is losing several sheep...and the size and depth of the footprints indicated a cat that was in the 200 or more lb. size. When my daughter explained the sound that the cat made while being growled at and stared down by her German Shepherd....he believed her. It was a sound that she said didn't sound like a typical sound that she would link up with a cat. The DNR said that it was the sound that the cougar would make if it thinks that it's in danger...and with the dog there....he maybe thought he was. There are indications that a female with three juvenile cats and a very large male have been seen in the general vicinity. I realize that without pictures or videos ...it is hard to prove just what they have seen.

Here is another story from CBS News....

) A cougar captured near a Minnesota elementary school in an incident that was caught on tape will be taken to a wildlife sanctuary and won't be euthanized, the state Department of Natural Resources says.

Tammy Quist, the executive director of the Wildcat Sanctuary in Cedar, Minn., has agreed to take custody of the cougar until a permanent home in a sanctuary is found for the cat, the agency said.

Willmar, Minn., veterinarian Gregg Laurence said the cougar was mostly calm and doing well Wednesday, a day after it was captured near Kennedy
Elementary School after running through a residential neighborhood.

The cat wasn't wearing a collar or tags and was somewhat thin, Laurence said.

Officers received a call around 7:45 a.m. Tuesday and found the cougar in a tree. It came down and ran around the neighborhood for about two hours.

School officials made sure all the children were inside and locked the doors. The animal wound up under a large camper trailer, and was shot with four tranquilizer darts. The cougar began to walk around again, but was wrestled to the ground by exotic animal specialist Bob Bilger, who lives in the area.

"One of the things you learn when working with wild cats," Bilger told The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Wednesday, "is that you don't get the luxury of being scared. So you have to train yourself that as the cat comes at you or looks like it's going to come at you, you have to respond by going at it. Believe it or not, if you are eye to eye with a cat and approach it, it will turn and go the other way, which is I'm sure what everybody saw me doing around that last house where we had the cat cornered."

It looks like I had better make sure I have my 9mm and an extra clip when we venture out into our woods.

That is all today from "Pistol Packin Bob"...Tune in again soon for another edition of "Now What Are They Doing?"