Officials betting that we won't notice cougars and quakes

The great Illinois earthquake and that ferocious cougar that was on the loose in Chicago had a few things in common.

They harmed no one, commanded an undue amount of public attention and were both pure products of nature.

And when the 5.2 temblor and the wandering mountain lion occurred in the very same week, two of Illinois' most enduring fairy tales came to an end.

For decades state officials denied that there was a cougar population in Illinois, and they have seemed to be in denial of the fact that we live atop of a dangerous fault line.

First the cougar, which is actually a mountain lion. Maybe the bureaucrats at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources over the years figured that there aren't many snow-capped peaks around here so there shouldn't be any mountain lions.

For decades, hundreds of people who saw one of the beefy cats in Illinois were put on a par with UFO nuts when they tried to report it the IDNR.

Cougar witnesses might as well have been describing an alien like E.T., with bulging eyes and rubbery skin. So those who claimed to have seen one of the cats, also known as pumas, were usually just discredited.

When confronted with tracks, droppings, photos or even livestock attacks, the official line has usually been that any cougar wandered in from another state, might be an escaped pet or was the result of a late night meeting with Mr. Jack Daniels.

State conservation officials in both Illinois and Michigan have maintained there are no breeding cougar colonies in either state.

"We acknowledge that there may be some individual cougars roaming the state's wild, and perhaps not-so-wild, areas. However, we have no physical proof of a viable resident cougar population," said a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in 2004.

I suppose once state officials admitted that cougars had actually made a return that it would be more work to tend to another animal population.

In February there were so many photos of alleged Illinois cougars floating around the Internet that a story began circulating accusing the state of stocking the woods with them.

A press release from Springfield stated that the photos were of cougars in Wyoming, not Illinois. "While it is not completely impossible for a cougar to be found in Illinois, sighting of a wild one is highly unlikely," said acting IDNR Director Sam Flood. "Wild cougars have been found in neighboring states but again, very, very rarely."

"It is absolutely not true that the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is releasing cougars anywhere in the state for any reason," said Flood, a former secretary of state manager who has been "acting" as the director for more than two years.

According to the February statement, "While the IDNR does investigate several alleged cougar sightings each year, most if not all turn out to be a case of mistaken identity… coyotes, bobcats or large domestic dogs or cats."

There was no mistaken identity last week. The beast killed by Chicago police officers in a city alleyway was no housecat.

Then a few days later came the earthquake. It wasn't the big one. But scientists know the big one is coming to the New Madrid fault line that runs through Illinois. Seismologists predict that within the next 50 years there is a near certainty of a 6.0 to 7.0 shaker here. Because our new construction is not quake-resistant like L.A.'s, experts believe that many Illinois buildings would collapse, highways would crumble and there would be many injuries and deaths.

But you wouldn't know of the threat from the state emergency management Web site. They have lots of information out front about bad weather, tornadoes and floods. Quite a bit about terrorism. And some generic information about earthquakes … if you can dig to find it.

The state's best suggestion: in an earthquake "duck, cover and hold." That is advice leftover from the Cold War, when schoolchildren were told to duck under a desk, cover their heads and hold in place to avoid the radioactive fireball.

I don't know how many state and local disaster officials went into the duck, cover and hold drill early Friday morning when the earth began to shake. Coincidentally, many were attending the Illinois Emergency Services Management Association annual convention in Decatur.

And their Texas Hold 'em Poker Tournament had gone into the wee hours.

That's a game of bluffing.

Just like we've seen with the cougars and the earthquakes.