http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1588536,CST-NWS-cougar24.article
Chicago Sun-Times
ROSCOE VILLAGE | Remains stored at Field Museum for science — not display
May 23, 2009
BY MAUREEN O’DONNELL
Remember the Chicago cougar?
It has been slightly more than a year since it was shot by police as it wandered Roscoe Village.
Afterward, there was talk that it might get mounted and put on public display.
The answer is no — and not just because of the six or so police slugs in its pelt.
“When it got to us, it had been sliced and diced by a whole team of veterinarians,” said Bruce Patterson, the Field Museum’s curator of mammals. “The sad truth is it would take an amazingly skilled taxidermist.”
Bullet holes don’t rule out display of a specimen.
“One of the [Field Museum's] Tsavo lions was hit six times” by bullets, Patterson said. “That one was preserved at the time. But the cougar was subjected to all sorts of analysis.”
“A full-blown necropsy is pretty invasive,” he said. “They cut out the back of the skull. … They’re looking for the brain. They’re not looking to make it a cosmetic operation.”
He isn’t critical of the way the animal was handled. The museum wasn’t looking for a cougar to display — it already has a cougar diorama. And the scientists who did the necropsy had many questions they wanted answered, Patterson said.
“We were happy, actually, that the specimen made its way to us,” he said.