Panic. There is a puma running loose in Holland! The puma has been seen yesterday and now police and hunters are hunting it down. It has to die. As a police official said:
“No, we won’t shoot it with a tranquilizer arrow. We are afraid it [the puma] will run away when we hit it. [???] We don’t want to take any chances.”

I am amazed… They make it seem like this puma is a serious thread to us! But the big pussy-cat has only one confirmed kill on his name so far, and that was a deer… And that seems quite a natural animal for a puma to kill… He or she needs to eat, and as all cats, the puma also seems to like meat. But the fact that a puma eats meat, doesn’t automatically say it will eat humans… As all wild animals, the first reaction for the puma will most likely to run away when people enter the forest and come to near.

I do understand that there is a small, tiny, little chance the puma will actually hurt someone, so let’s catch it. Catch it. Don’t kill it. Luckily the Dutch Animal Protection has now told the authorities to not kill the animal, just approach it quietly, use the tranquilizer gun and catch it. Not hunt it down like a runaway criminal with helicopters and trigger happy cops! As that makes it more scared and more likely to actually do something bad… Let’s hope they get smart and don’t just kill the poor animal…

Oh, if like me you wonder what a puma looks like, besides the sporting brand symbol on shirt or shoes, click on the picture below!

Puma

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 19:47 and is filed under News & media, Animals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.