Giant cat kills family's feline, tries to get in their house west of Calgary
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
211.22046
Summary
A cougar has been spotted near a woman's home in Calgary, Alberta, and it has not been quenched. The problem is, it's a cougar that has been around for a long time and it's not scared of humans.
Transcript
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All right, now I'm going to talk about something else that's been breaking on the news, and it's
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pretty important, especially if you do live south or southwest of Calgary, as I do, and I want to
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explain a few things. So it's been hitting the news, the Western Standard broke that last night.
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A woman had a cougar on an acreage southwest of the city of Calgary. It came into her yard.
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Her daughter was eating lunch, a five-year-old girl, and looking out the window, she started
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screaming that something has got their cat, Oreo. As you can see in this video, the cougar was right
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outside their door. It was pawing at the door at some points. It was snarling. The dead cat,
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unfortunately, is behind the cougar there. It had killed it, and it would not be scared away. It
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was there for over five minutes. This is behind my place now. You see some video. I'm only a few
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miles from there. This is three young cougars walking a trail behind my house. I have a game
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camera back there. It just wasn't me filming it, of course, and it was in the night. What I want to
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establish is I understand how to live with and around wildlife that can be potentially dangerous.
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I live among them now. I have no interest in harming animals. Never want to, but I also understand
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when the line has been crossed and an animal has become too dangerous to tolerate. So this cougar that
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came to that woman's house, she called fish and wildlife once it ran away, and a lot of bizarre
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behavior. The cougar left the dead cat in the garden. It didn't take it with it, so it wasn't
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quite, or maybe it is starving. It was skinny looking in the video, but food might not have
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been the motivation. Then the cougar came back, as you can see in this picture, in the night.
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It came back and was behind the door. It looks like a young cougar, a smaller cougar, but still,
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when you think of the power of a five-pound house cat, think about the kind of power in even an 80 or 100
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pound cougar, a very, very, very dangerous animal. It's extremely rare for a cougar to attack a person.
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Very, very rare. It's something a lot of people don't even realize. Like, as I showed with my game
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camera, cougars are actually quite common. You just don't see them. They're very shy. They stay in the
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woods. They have no interest in interaction with people. And it's, as I said, the amount of people
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around, if cougars were that dangerous, we'd see a heck of a lot more adverse outcomes. We'd see a heck
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of a lot more attacks. Thankfully, we don't. But when it happens like this, when that line has been
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crossed, when a cougar is behaving so unusually as this one, as bizarrely as this one, as dangerously as
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this one, it has to be destroyed. And I've been watching the online discussions of this. Of course, a lot of
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the armchair quarterbacks, that's why I'm giving some of my pedigree. I'll point out, like I said, I grew up in
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Banff, for those who know me. I worked 20 years as a surveyor in isolated areas. And now I live on an acreage
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where, yes, every few weeks I have cougars go through my yard, bears, lots of other critters.
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I love that. And we have gotten along fine. I've never shot so much as a squirrel in my yard. And
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hopefully it stays that way. But when we get a circumstance like this, an outlier with a cougar
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like this, this is very frightening. That area, and again, if anybody lives southwest of Calgary
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watching this, watch out. People put their kids out in the mornings to get the school bus at seven
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o'clock. This cougar is still running on the loose. It's come to this house and tried to get in their
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door twice. Other people saying, well, we'll just tranquilize it. It's not that easy, I'm afraid.
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Cougars aren't like bears. Okay, they can't be easily trapped in a large live trap and then
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relocated somewhere else safely, unfortunately. Tranquilizing isn't that easy either. They're
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smart. They can hide out quite well and just trying to get there and get a dart into it. Again, people,
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and what are you going to do with it? You can't rehabilitate it. I mean, again, it's behaving so
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unusually like that and so aggressively and so dangerously. It has to be put down. They aren't
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endangered, but a lot of people are endangered. So people saying it was just a cat. That's not the
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point about the cat this thing killed. It's the fact that it came out during broad daylight and did
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it. It did it in somebody's backyard and then tried to get in the door to her daughter. So for fools saying
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we should just leave it be, it's nature. Look, some people are urban dwelling. They don't
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necessarily understand. In these cases, it has to happen. Out where I live, it's ranch country.
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There are a lot of cougars. There are a lot of bears. There's a lot of interactions. I know they
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don't publicize it a lot, but I guess what? Actually, a number of cougars get shot every year
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out my way. It's usually because of adverse interaction with livestock producers, but they are
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not endangered. It's a last resort. Those of us who choose to live out there do it because we love the
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wildlife because we want to be around them. I mean, there's smart things you should be doing.
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Don't leave your food or garbage out. Don't attract animals around. Some other people saying
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somebody was clearly feeding that cougar. No, no, I don't believe they were. They're not like foxes
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or bears where they can become habituated quite so much. Again, they're so shy with people. There
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wouldn't be the opportunity for somebody to start feeding it, though. Who knows? You leave enough meat
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outside or you can attract anything. I don't think that was the case happening here. Cougars, again,
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tend to stay away. It would grab it in the night and take off. This is just not typical behavior.
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So the news is going to come out on this story as it keeps unfolding. I'll spare you the name of the
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lady. She is a neighbor of mine just a few miles away. But either that cougar is going to be found
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and destroyed, as I'm afraid it has to be, or even worse, that cougar is going to attack somebody.
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Something is wrong with that particular animal. You've got to think about it like people. Again,
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99% of people won't harm anybody. They don't want to. Things happen. Sometimes something switch flips
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in somebody's head or whatever else. They go off. They get violent. They get dangerous. And we have
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to do something about it. In the case of a cougar like this, as you can see in that picture with the
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blood on its paws, aggressive and trying to get into the house, there is no other option. So again,
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if you're watching in the Southwest, if you know people with acreages down there, though, this is
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ongoing right now, tell them to watch out. Keep the pets closer than usual at home. And by all means,
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of course, keep your children nearby. The few attacks that cougars have ever done, which are
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very rare, almost never with men. Predominantly, it's been with women and children. They're opportunists.
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They're hunters. They will go for what they feel is smaller and more vulnerable. And as rare as those
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attacks may be, of course, the outcome is as tragic as you could possibly imagine. We couldn't imagine a
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child being killed. And that's an area where there are a lot of families and children living. So
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keep the eyes open. Let's hope this gets resolved. And, you know, we can have a rational discussion
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about living with wildlife, managing wildlife and getting along with them, but understanding that
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sometimes there's just no other choice. Public safety has to come first.