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I went to let my two miniature poodles out before bed on Friday, March 28, 2008, and was completely shocked at what was in my back yard. I always go out in the yard stomping, making noise, to scare off the “usual” critters; rabbits, raccoons, possums, and particularly skunks, before I let the dogs out.

Friday night, around 9:00 pm, we didn’t have our outside lights on, as we had not been outside since dusk. I opened the garage service door while flipping the switch for the outside lights and there standing by the bird feeder pole in my yard were what I believe to be two, one “very large”, and one smaller, cougars.

The size of the one evoked a “you have to be ******** kidding me” right out of my mouth. They both turned their big round heads and glowing eyes at me for a split second and immediately, almost liquidly, ran the twelve feet to a four foot picket fence and were over it like it wasn’t even there.

Now I’m completely on edge going out with the dogs in the early morning and at night. I have taken to doing a complete search of the yard, trees, rooftop, etc. before I let my dogs out. We live less than a mile from Klein Creek Forest Preserve and the Prairie Path is right down the block. We have had deer and foxes come through our yard from time to time, but this was certainly unexpected and extremely unnerving.

To quantify the sizes: the smaller one looked between 30-40 pounds, 20” shoulder height, the very large one looked pretty beefy in the rear end, and it’s shoulder height around 30”. I only remember the coloring of the big one, it appeared flat greyish.

I don’t know if I should have called the sheriff, they probably would not have come out, and what would they do, anyway.