Five unusual animal sightings in the suburbs

A possible cougar spotted climbing a tree near Streamwood last month isn't the first to be reported in the suburbs. Just last winter, a visitor reported seeing a cougar in the East Branch Forest Preserve near Glendale Heights.

It's also not the only instance of unusual animals showing up in the suburbs - be it alligators, rare lizards, bears or even a tiger head.

Here are a few of the most notable cases over the years:

• A Libertyville woman was startled to find a 2½-foot lizard with a long, blue forked tongue on her front patio in 2009. An expert later identified it as an African savanna monitor lizard, which likely was an escaped pet.

• Five years ago, an O'Hare International Airport worker found a small, sickly alligator under an escalator in Terminal 3. A photo circulated on Twitter showed a person on the Blue Line, which goes to O'Hare, holding an alligator that looked similar, but police never opened an investigation.

• A young black bear - likely the same one spotted across northwest and north central Illinois over several months in 2014 - was spotted running by Interstate 90 near Marengo that same year. Officials suspected he was forced out of his home territory by other bears.

• A tiger head believed to have bounced out the back of a truck was found in Lakemoor in 2009, likely while being transported to a taxidermist. Local police said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials had received a call from the owner, who reported the head missing, but it was unclear whether possession of the tiger head was legal.