Milwaukee Journal, March 4, 1941
The Now-Famous Milwaukee Lion is not the first wild cat to have been spotted in the city. The Milwaukee Journal joked about a rash of lion sightings in 1961 with this cartoon.
The most recent news on the now nationally-known Milwaukee Lion indicates that there very well may be a large wild cat loose in our city. Whether or not the animal is ever found remains to be seen. However, this kind of thing – as odd as it may be – has happened before. In February 1961, Mequon police chief Robert Milke spent weeks hunting a large “catamount” (a large, wild cat) that had been sighted in that city by “nine or ten respected citizens.” Milke had no doubts that the cat existed and truly was on the loose. He even tried tracking it with a helicopter. However, the beast proved elusive. “If only we had some snow,” Milke told the press, unable to get a good read on its tracks.
The story remained an amusing tale of a small town cop with too much free time until early March, when a rash of Milwaukee residents reported seeing a similar animal. A man reported a lion or cougar prowling around his backyard in the 3400 block of North 15th Street . Two police officers also reported seeing a large cat that night, as they checked an abandoned vehicle near Union Cemetery on North Teutonia Avenue . One homeowner even claimed to have made plaster casts of tracks that the alleged lion or cougar had made in his backyard in the 1200 block of West Hadley Street .
Over the next few days, the cat seemingly made its way to the western suburbs. An Elm Grove man spotted it one evening near his property. “While I was standing there the thing went past faster than I’ve ever seen anything run,” he told a reporter. “It was making peculiar noises like a yelp or a squeal.” Days later, Wauwatosa patrolman Gail Cobb and another officer saw the animal as they pulled to the side of Blue Mound Road late at night to talk. The next morning, Cobb returned to the scene and found large paw prints. “I had read about the mountain lion and thought maybe it was a cat or a dog,” he said. “Now, I’m a believer.”
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Walter Pelzer, taxidermist at the public museum and well-read on the topic of large wild cats, was much more skeptical. He examined the casts made on Hadley Street and determined that they belonged to a large dog, the positioning of the nails being a key indicator. Their size, he said, was due to the dog skidding in the soft earth. He also pointed to the fact that no livestock in the area had been reported missing, nor had any animal carcasses turned up. “It’s just like the flying saucer bit,” he told the Milwaukee Journal. Milwaukee County Zoo director George Speidel was no more convinced than Pelzer. “The possibility of a mountain lion roaming the greater Milwaukee area,” he said, “is about as remote as finding the abominable snowman on Holy Hill.”
Nearly as quickly as the Greater Milwaukee Catamount appeared, it vanished. Sightings of the cat stopped and the odd little item was no longer news. Whether the entire thing was the figment of a few imaginations or a flesh and blood wild cat who wondered far off his own beaten path was never learned. Even if the Milwaukee Lion of 2015 similarly fades from the public eye, hopefully its memory proves to be a little longer-lasting.
Note: Part 2 of the Milwaukee City Flag piece is coming next week. In the meantime, please tune into WMSE 91.7 every weekday at 7:40 am and 5:40 pm to hear the What Made Milwaukee Famous radio segment. Check out matthewjprigge.com for more by the author or his Mondo Milwaukee boat tour for more weird stories from Milwaukee ’s past.
