Lion around

With the world on lockdown or isolation or quarantine ("corn teen," in Baltimore parlance), we keep hearing animal stories from all over. 

SUCH AS stories of monkeys, usually fed by doting tourists who are no longer touring, running amok on foreign streets, and deer roaming untrammeled in Japan, and antelope playing at home on the range...

AND THEN...in Santiago, the capital of Chile, a wild cougar paraded around the streets for 15 hours.

The streets were empty due to coronavirus curfew.

This was last week. It didn't take long for animal control officials to determine that the cougar had come in from the woods, and was not an escapee from the Metropolitan Zoo, although it's hard to figure how that made much difference in the plan to round him up.

Chilean police and their Agricultural and Livestock Service got help from the zoo though. Specialists told them how to track the big cat as it wandered through neighborhood after neighborhood.

This mountain lion is believed to have left his usual home in the Andes mountains in search of whatever mountain lions are after. Whatever that was, the puma was still looking for it, and after a 15-hour jaunt through Santiago, tranquilizer darts did their job.  The cat was taken to the zoo for rehab and a good meal and will be taken back to the mountains, where he will have quite a story to tell the rest of the pride.

"Man oh man!" (I can hear him now!) "They have these hamburger joints and chicken box carryouts and seafood houses and everyone drives cars and looks at their cell phone all day! There were hardly any of them out on the street, but I think I scared a couple of 'em!"

Bring him to Baltimore! Let's see how tough he really is.