Some Moron brought a cougar to a party and it went nuts...
- By Shawn C. Baker
- Published 06/2/2008
Shawn C. Baker
Shawn lives in sometimes sunny San Pedro, California with his beautiful wife Sara and their two cats Lily and Thompson. He works full time at a bookstore for bread but spends 90% of the rest of his time writing novels, screenplays and opinionated soapboxes that, although sometimes crass, are really just meant to
make the world a better place. Shawn drinks coffee all day and good beer all night. He loves comics even more than he loves movies, but he loves music most of all.
That’s about my favorite line in the 1984 classic Ghostbusters. For me this line shares a place at the top of the movie quote canon, along with just about everything Dennis Hopper says in Blue Velvet or River’s Edge, Robert Loggia in Lost Highway and more recently Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. These are instances where cinema becomes more than on the spot entertainment; it becomes ammunition - retorts, rebuttals and retailiations to those situations that arise daily and occupy the frustrating dimensions that lie perpetually beyond our control. Film is an escape but also a weapon - you load up your dialogue, dialect and your mannerisms, saving them for those special moments when the world needs a big fat special 'Fuck you'. Writers know this - they write to perform the same retaliations/exorcisms that we do, just on a grander scale with a bigger audience. And their checks get cashed because they know their audience can relate. However, I have to wonder if either Dan Aykroyd or Harold Ramis could have ever related to the reality of a cougar running wild in a major metropolitan area. I doubt it, I know I couldn't. So imagine my surprise to learn that recently, back in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois a cougar had indeed run amok.
No, really.
Back on Monday, April 14th Chicago police shot and killed a 150 lb. cougar in an alley in Roscoe Village on the city’s residential north side. Wow. I lived right there for almost two years. Moving has made me miss my chance to utter the cougar line at what will probably (hopefully) be my only chance at a truly perfect opportunity. Wheww. Now, for the record, I’m not making light of the cougar’s death. NO. I am an animal lover, a cat lover especially, and it bothers me that the animal had to die.* However, what bothers me even more is the general conundrum of an unclaimed, wild animal lumbering through the streets of a modern city. The whys and wherefores here are staggering. I could go into the deteriorating ecosystems of the world. I could go into pollution. I could go into rich people with too much time and money on their hands**, but realistically we are all busy internet people so I promise that this will be an abbreviated editorial, so long as each and every one of you reading promise in return to buy my eventual book, ‘Cougar Party’ and see the subsequent film, written by me, directed by Brian De Palma and staring Joyce DeWitt, Jeff Goldblum and Viggo Mortensen’s penis as, you guessed it, the cougar.
Seriously, the first question we need to ask ourselves is, ‘what the hell was a cougar doing in Chicago?’ Sigourney Weaver was nowhere to be found, so it wasn’t Zuul yet… hold on. I can hear some of you out there saying this is old news by now but to that I say A) there is talk of another cougar present in the windy city, roaming the streets even as I write this and B) A FREAKIN’ COUGAR IN DOWNTOWN CHICAGO IS NOT OLD NEWS UNTIL A BEAR SHOWS UP A COUPLE BLOCKS AWAY.
First and most obvious attempt at an explanation: the cougar escaped from a nearby zoo. Well, while Lincoln Park Zoo is nearby, as far as I can remember or currently discern from their website listings they do not have any cougars in house.** Brookfield Zoo is a hell of a way’s away if one is traveling by paw, so unless a cabbie picked the thing up (and Cabbies in Chi town will leave an old woman holding a limbless baby in the rain, believe me) that’s out as well.
So where the hell did the cougar(s) come from and why did they choose North Chicago’s swanky Roscoe Village anyway? Definitely not for the parking, and most of the cool, old buildings are disappearing as more and more of those homogenized, red brick yuppie-friendly two-flats spread throughout the area, driving property taxes up and blue collar artists out of what was once a unique and inspiring area. If these cougars were Harbingers of Gozer the Gozarian then maybe they’d be looking to exploit some of the funky architecture present in nearby Wicker Park or the Loop areas, but now Roscoe’s known for families, parks, and the occasional gay bar to liven things up.
So we’re left staring the question in the face, contemplating a modern anomaly the likes of which we may see more and more of as our forests and other sacred places continue to disappear in rabid real estate frenzies as developers rip off their shirts, howl at the moon and thrust their proverbial profit-cocks into the Earth over and over again. In reality the animals probably came from as far away as Upstate Wisconsin, possibly a Midwestern millionaire’s Safari gone awry that left two unbalanced beasts a long way from home and sorely lacking in dining supplies.
In closing I’m left remembering my time in Roscoe Village. As I said I lived there for almost two years and it follows that being a part-time lush I frequented the watering holes in the area. I repeatedly find myself imagining walking out of the Riverview Tavern or the Beat Kitchen about two A.M. on a Saturday, looking over my shoulder and then heading into the alley to take a leak. Standing there, aiming at the wall in blissful, drunken abandon I’m suddenly distracted by heavy breathing. Alarmed (this is an alley in Chicago after all) I turn to see billows of warm breath in the cool Chicago air. It’s dark and I’m drunk (and of course, not in Wyoming) so two and two do not immediately equal COUGAR!!! I piss on my own leg as understanding sets in and fear turns my spine to quivering jelly. Before I can overcome the shock enough to run the cougar lunges, taking me down in front of the exiting bar crowd. Later, while heavily bandaged and pumped full of Morphine I hear someone ask, ‘What the hell happened to that guy’. The reply, of course, trips off my silent lips even as someone nearby senses the opportunity and goes for the quotation gold. Together we say, ‘some moron brought a cougar to a party and it went nuts.’ Ha ha. Irony, ain’t it a bitch?
..............................
*Alot of folks are criticizing Mayor Richard Daley for CPD's response, and I'm defintitely not saying they shouldn't be, I'm just saying I know I would probably lose rational thought and motor skill if I came face to face with an enraged cougar anywhere on Earth, let alone in a residential neighborhood.
** I used to know a rich kid who had two baby snow leopards as pets. Evolutionarily speaking - SURVIVAL RATING LOW.
*** http://www.lpzoo.org/animals/
No, really.
Back on Monday, April 14th Chicago police shot and killed a 150 lb. cougar in an alley in Roscoe Village on the city’s residential north side. Wow. I lived right there for almost two years. Moving has made me miss my chance to utter the cougar line at what will probably (hopefully) be my only chance at a truly perfect opportunity. Wheww. Now, for the record, I’m not making light of the cougar’s death. NO. I am an animal lover, a cat lover especially, and it bothers me that the animal had to die.* However, what bothers me even more is the general conundrum of an unclaimed, wild animal lumbering through the streets of a modern city. The whys and wherefores here are staggering. I could go into the deteriorating ecosystems of the world. I could go into pollution. I could go into rich people with too much time and money on their hands**, but realistically we are all busy internet people so I promise that this will be an abbreviated editorial, so long as each and every one of you reading promise in return to buy my eventual book, ‘Cougar Party’ and see the subsequent film, written by me, directed by Brian De Palma and staring Joyce DeWitt, Jeff Goldblum and Viggo Mortensen’s penis as, you guessed it, the cougar.
Seriously, the first question we need to ask ourselves is, ‘what the hell was a cougar doing in Chicago?’ Sigourney Weaver was nowhere to be found, so it wasn’t Zuul yet… hold on. I can hear some of you out there saying this is old news by now but to that I say A) there is talk of another cougar present in the windy city, roaming the streets even as I write this and B) A FREAKIN’ COUGAR IN DOWNTOWN CHICAGO IS NOT OLD NEWS UNTIL A BEAR SHOWS UP A COUPLE BLOCKS AWAY.
First and most obvious attempt at an explanation: the cougar escaped from a nearby zoo. Well, while Lincoln Park Zoo is nearby, as far as I can remember or currently discern from their website listings they do not have any cougars in house.** Brookfield Zoo is a hell of a way’s away if one is traveling by paw, so unless a cabbie picked the thing up (and Cabbies in Chi town will leave an old woman holding a limbless baby in the rain, believe me) that’s out as well.
So where the hell did the cougar(s) come from and why did they choose North Chicago’s swanky Roscoe Village anyway? Definitely not for the parking, and most of the cool, old buildings are disappearing as more and more of those homogenized, red brick yuppie-friendly two-flats spread throughout the area, driving property taxes up and blue collar artists out of what was once a unique and inspiring area. If these cougars were Harbingers of Gozer the Gozarian then maybe they’d be looking to exploit some of the funky architecture present in nearby Wicker Park or the Loop areas, but now Roscoe’s known for families, parks, and the occasional gay bar to liven things up.
So we’re left staring the question in the face, contemplating a modern anomaly the likes of which we may see more and more of as our forests and other sacred places continue to disappear in rabid real estate frenzies as developers rip off their shirts, howl at the moon and thrust their proverbial profit-cocks into the Earth over and over again. In reality the animals probably came from as far away as Upstate Wisconsin, possibly a Midwestern millionaire’s Safari gone awry that left two unbalanced beasts a long way from home and sorely lacking in dining supplies.
In closing I’m left remembering my time in Roscoe Village. As I said I lived there for almost two years and it follows that being a part-time lush I frequented the watering holes in the area. I repeatedly find myself imagining walking out of the Riverview Tavern or the Beat Kitchen about two A.M. on a Saturday, looking over my shoulder and then heading into the alley to take a leak. Standing there, aiming at the wall in blissful, drunken abandon I’m suddenly distracted by heavy breathing. Alarmed (this is an alley in Chicago after all) I turn to see billows of warm breath in the cool Chicago air. It’s dark and I’m drunk (and of course, not in Wyoming) so two and two do not immediately equal COUGAR!!! I piss on my own leg as understanding sets in and fear turns my spine to quivering jelly. Before I can overcome the shock enough to run the cougar lunges, taking me down in front of the exiting bar crowd. Later, while heavily bandaged and pumped full of Morphine I hear someone ask, ‘What the hell happened to that guy’. The reply, of course, trips off my silent lips even as someone nearby senses the opportunity and goes for the quotation gold. Together we say, ‘some moron brought a cougar to a party and it went nuts.’ Ha ha. Irony, ain’t it a bitch?
..............................
*Alot of folks are criticizing Mayor Richard Daley for CPD's response, and I'm defintitely not saying they shouldn't be, I'm just saying I know I would probably lose rational thought and motor skill if I came face to face with an enraged cougar anywhere on Earth, let alone in a residential neighborhood.
** I used to know a rich kid who had two baby snow leopards as pets. Evolutionarily speaking - SURVIVAL RATING LOW.
*** http://www.lpzoo.org/animals/
