So they sent pictures of the supposed "cougar" tracks from the park where I jog to the experts at the Brookfield Zoo, who declared the mystery beast was "not a cougar."  When asked what it was, they said, "We don't know."

I'm thinking that might be even worse.  We don't have a cougar on the loose in our local park, we have a "mystery beast" on the loose in our park.  It could be anything!  A wild boar!  A rabid giraffe!  An emotionally unstable pygmy hippo!  Who knows what is lurking out there in the bushes… waiting for me to jog by…

I also found out that our editor, Bill Ebel, actually reads my blog.  He was quite excited to hear that I bequeathed our new camera to him in case I got taken out by the cougar on my next jog.  A little TOO excited, if you ask me.

As I headed out for my run this morning, a woman I passed on the street called out, "Are you hunting for the cougar?"  Wheaton has gone cougar-crazy.  Of course, now we know it isn't a cougar.  It's a mystery beast.  If I see it on my next jog, I won't know whether to make myself look large, play dead, or run away in a serpentine fashion.

Stay tuned for more updates on the "Mystery Beast of Northside Park."

Everything else is going very well here… we're very, very busy preparing some fun stuff and fun announcements.  Stay tuned for that, too!