Nobody panic but…..
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!
(not actual lion but scarier picture)
Boomer, the 150 pound domesticated male lion who escaped from his owner near Maniwaki around 9 p.m., was captured last night on the 105 just north of Gatineau. MY GOD, we all could have been eaten!
Question...what kinda crazy person has A PET LION!?!
May 1st, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Scary - but this happens in Ontario more than you’d care to know.
I’m a horse owner and the online horse community in Ontario has this topic pop up on a fairly regular basis.
One poor woman in the Niagra area had a horse attacked by what appears to be a jaguar that escaped from a pet home - at 4 in the afternoon! The horse survived and the vet attributes this partially to the fact that the exotic cat seemed to be declawed in the front!! Her fear has been that - at 4pm - this could have easily been one of her children.
Also, up north around Bonfield, Ontario - they have had regular sightings of panthers. Locals suspect they are the descendants of a litter that was lost after the closure of an exotic animal farm in Powassan, Ontario.
We haven’t had any personal experience with exotic pets on the loose (if you don’t count our neighbours escaped alpacas who frightened my horses into hysterics!!! - I think they thought horse eating aliens had landed -even our dogs hid!)
but there was a female cougar and her two cubs lounging in the middle of the road leading to our barn at our old property. We placed a call to the MNR who told us firmly that there are no cougars in Ontario. Ooohhhkay - either the barncats are getting too many hormones in their food or I need a new pair of glasses, I guess…. Besides the size and colour - I’ve never seen a tail like that!
I don’t view them as being much more of a nuisance than the bears who would regularly come a little too close to the house (including leaving huge piles of apple-filled poop on our front lawn) in the fall but they should at least let people know that it’s a possibility that they are around! I’d actually be much more frightened of an escaped “pet” than a wild animal.
I dunno - any regular ol’ housecats I’ve ever shared my life with would be DAMN scary if they were 80lbs heavier and able to push their weight around! lol
May 1st, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Did you hear about this attack back in March?
http://www.thestar.com/DesiLife/article/347684
Then, in February of this year - a jaguar escaped from the Guhu Exotic Animal Reserve in Bracebridge, ON. Goodness knows where he’d be except he stopped to kill the family dog who was tied and couldn’t get away from him - giving officers time to get there and shoot him.
Its pretty scary - what are the rules about keeping these types of “pets”?
May 1st, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Sorry - I regret my choice of words with the first example - I shouldn’t have said, “attack”, I don’t think. This is a young lion put in an unusual circumstance and he batted his playmates around.
Makes you wonder about the people who get these pets home and end up looking at this kind of playful critter at some point. And, again - I’d rather face this playful guy than my cat, 80lbs heavier, when I am late with the Whiskas!!