Cougars no more

Not those kind of Cougs. The real ones. Eastern, to be specific. Wednesday was a sad day for anyone who even remotely associates themselves with anything badass. The US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the most badass animal of modern memory, the Eastern Cougar, officially extinct. While this has long been expected among wildlife enthusiasts, the confirmation means that the largest member of the cat family once found East of the Mississippi is off the Endangered Species list and onto the officially no long with us list. Read more about it here.

USFW officials determined that the few sightings made East of the Mississippi River since 1990 have been of escaped or released Cougars, and that not a single wild breeding pair exists on the right side of the Mighty Mississippi. In the chart below courtesy of the Eastern Cougar Network (bet they filed for that domain name early on), blue dots mean confirmed sightings beyond a reasonable doubt, red are probable sightings and yellow represents unconfirmed sightings. Suspicious Michigonians. The green swath in Florida represents Florida Panther populations, an animal not officially a member of the Cougar family. RIP, big cat.

The Story of Christian the Lion

I was introduced to this story a few months ago by one of my younger brothers, also named Christian, who was likely deep into a Googling his own name session. Anyway, this is the story of a lion, Christian, originally purchased by John Rendall and Anthony Bourke at a Harrods dept. store in London in 1969 - Just your standard Harrods purchase. Of course a lion gets too big to keep at home, so Christian was released to the wild with the help of Kenyan conservationalist George Adamson. In 1971, Adamson told Rendall and Bourke of Christian's successful integration into the wild. Missing their old friend, Rendall and Bourke set off for Kenya to track down Christian with Adamson cautioning that Christian may not remember them. The video below captures the reunion of Christian with Rendall and Bourke.

Things could have got ugly at 1:15 but I'm glad they didn't. For the full story, check out the Born Free Foundation.