When I lived in Michigan out in the country, I used to keep a watchful eye out for the wild animals that would come running onto the road from the fields. Sometimes I would keep a mental list if it was a particularly active animal night. One night I actually saw a deer, raccoon, pheasant, rabbit and fox. The fox was roadkill already which was sad because I'd never seen a live wild fox. It was not unusual to see animals out in the country.
Since moving here to the big city of El Paso, I have seen a rabbit and a lizard wild while walking on the hill near the mountains that are practically in my back yard. I realized that many other wild animals might live in those mountains but it had not occurred to me that actual mountain lions would live there.
El Paso is in the middle of a very bad drought and we recently had a mountain lion come down out of the mountains and make his way into our city. He wasn't just in the outskirts like I am, he was in the busy city. It was of course on the news and you can watch it from the KTSM news instead of me telling you all about it. Of course being in a city with mountain ranges near by this has not been the first incident the city has ever dealt with. People are angry because the mountain lion was shot and killed.
The thing that gets me though is that they were not the person standing there with a scared, hurt mountain lion coming through a fence toward them. You bet if it was me and I had a gun, that lion would be dead. The police officer did his job. Maybe I'm biased because I have friends back in Michigan who are on the police force. But do people really think it would have been better to let it run loose on the city again where it could have injured someone, someone's sister, mother, daughter or brother, father, or son.
Other cities have had issues with wild animals coming to the city. I remember in Detroit they had a deer issue, when a deer leaped through a restaurant window. Animals enter cities and property can be damaged or people could be hurt.
I don't think that every animal that enters a city should automatically be killed, but I do think that as citizens who expect to be protected by our law enforcement officers we should not criticize them for doing their jobs.
Do you know of an animal sighting in a city on video, have you experienced this type of thing? Leave me a comment and maybe a link to let me know.
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