Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
It pains you, but you decide to kill the cougar.
The animal is 100 feet up a tree and would probably harm or kill itself when it falls from the tree after being drugged.
Even if the animal lived through the fall, it's already proven it can't stay away from human areas. So it would have returned to the park eventually, hurting a person in the process.
You take aim and shoot the cougar and it falls from its perch on the tree. It's not a popular decision, but you really feel you've made the right one.
This is the decision made by conservation officer Duncan Douglass.
"Once a wild animal hangs around a populated area for a while, it's going to return. If this animal is a danger to humans, you really have no choice but to kill it," he says.
Shortly after, a large number of angry letters poured into his office. He defended his decision by writing back to each person.