Saturday, January 1, 2011

Crap headline

If you read the headline "Suspected cougar sighting in South Surrey" (as I did on CBC News online on December 28, 2010), wouldn't you expect to read about an animal being spotted that might or might not be a cougar? I did - as in, that's what I expected - yet that's not what I read. Here's the article in full (the bolding is by me, and also note where all the sign point should be all the signs point):

Conservation officers have been called in to investigate the discovery of a deer carcass in South Surrey, B.C., that at least one resident is blaming on a cougar attack.

Resident Margaret Corrigan says the deer was found near her home at 192 Street and 3A Avenue, southeast of Vancouver, and even though she hasn't actually seen the big cat, all the sign point to a cougar attack.

"He had just ripped off the front leg. I think the cougar jumped him from the top and pierced his neck and brought him down that way," said Corrigan, who spotted other signs in the area.

"They go to the nearest tree and they scratch the bark on the tree and then they spray and that sort of claims the area as theirs. And right beside the kill was a tree that was scratched — very freshly scratched — so that we could tell that it was a cougar," she said.

Corrigan says people in the rural neighbourhood are concerned about all the small children and pets.

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