After reports of a lion or mountain cat on the loose in town this week, authorities checked with the Milwaukee County Zoo to make sure no animals had gone over the wall. None had, and the investigation into the sightings continues.

In the early 1900s, when Edward Bean was superintendent of the zoo, then located in Washington Park, late one Sunday night he got a call at home from the night watchman informing him that the zoo’s leopard, "Tommy," had gotten out of his cage.

"Where is he now?" Bean shouted over the phone.

"I don’t know," confessed the shook-up watchman. "I am in a saloon across the street."

Bean borrowed a shotgun from a neighbor and headed for the zoo’s main building.

He related what happened then in a story in The Milwaukee Journal on Jan. 24, 1927:

"I opened the door leading into the entrance hall and not seeing Tommy in the dim light cast by the Vliet Street lamps, went across the hall to my office. The switches to all the lights in the building were in there and I turned on a light at either end of the animal house.

"… I stepped out of the office (and) called twice … when I heard a guttural meow behind me. I looked around, and there alongside of the office door sat Tommy. His tail was curled around his paws and he looked just like a huge house cat.

"I didn’t dare go back to the office so I walked slowly across the hall to the washroom. I had the boys block the window with heavy planks and then went to the door and called, ‘Here Tommy, here Tommy.’ I thought that if I could get him into the room I could dash out of the door and lock him in.

"Tommy came as far as the door but the room looked too much like a cage for him so he trotted down to the Vliet Street end of the building and after looking out of the window …

"While he was debating whether or not to make a dive out of the window I had the watchman go to the goat pen and get a 2-week-old kid. I tied the kid to the wall opposite the door and called Tommy again. Just as he approached the door the kid sounded off with a plaintive blat. There was a flash of yellow and a thud as the leopard landed on the goat."

Bean slipped out of the washroom and locked the door. Tommy was returned to his cage the next day.

According to a story in The Journal on July 20, 1920, there was a disturbance on East Wisconsin Avenue near North Broadway two nights earlier caused by a lion. Or what an unidentified man thought was one after he stumbled out of a nearby tavern at closing time.

A Journal reporter heard the man calling out, "Just a minute, lady, and I’ll save you," and went to investigate.

Seeing no woman, the reporter asked the man what was going on.

"Don’t you see that lady there being attacked by a lion?" asked the man. "I’sh a gentleman, and I won’t go home while any lady ish in danger."

The "lady" turned out to be a mannequin in a shop storefront, reported the story, "and crouching at her feet was the pelt of a real lion."