Coyotes living in urban areas, thankfully

[Inland]

Eating canadian geese and dogs off their leashes.

I've seen them crossing the road through my local forest preserve. They look like tall dogs with bushy tails.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/opinion/06sun4.html

snip
Just such an amazing circumstance appears to be happening on the outskirts of Chicago. Research biologists there announced last month that they had stumbled across a possible answer to the problem of the proliferating suburban goose: the proliferating suburban coyote.

The researchers belong to the Cook County Coyote Project, which has spent nearly six years studying the habits of more than 200 coyotes in the northern and western Chicago suburbs. Among other things, they tried to determine what the growing numbers of these beasts might have had to do with another puzzling development: the sudden end of the goose explosion. The local population of Canada geese had soared in the 1980's and 90's, but by 2000 the increase had slowed to about only 1 percent a year. An unknown predator was assumed to be the reason.

The coyote was not an obvious suspect, being small and skulky and unlikely to stand up to a wrathful Canada goose. Examinations of coyote scat had seldom found damning traces of eggshell. But then infrared cameras exposed the coyote as a nest robber, one that carefully cracks open a goose egg and licks it clean.

Evidence like this bolsters the conclusion that coyotes, in their own wily way, have become keystone predators in a land long emptied of wolves and mountain lions. The Cook County project's principal investigator, Prof. Stanley Gehrt of Ohio State University, speaks admiringly of his subjects, who have withstood more than 200 years of hunting, trapping and poisoning and are more entrenched in North America than ever. Every state but Hawaii has them. They have spread into suburbs and cities, forcing biologists to revise their definition of coyote habitat to this: Basically anywhere.
snip

[afdip]

1. we see them in south carolina regularly . . . attempts to train

them to utilize the overabundance of repukes as a food source have failed.

[hlthe2b]

3. LOL

anyone who thinks animals are less intelligent than man....:rofl:

[ToolTex]

4. No, but it remains an honorable goal and should continue.

n/t

[Jade Fox]

6. snarf!

Now, now. Expect Rush Limbaugh to use you as proof that it's Liberals who
are the REALLY intolerant folks, not historically-proven-intolerant Conservatives!

[formercia]

7. There are some things even a Coyote won't eat.

All that , hate, greed and Kool-Aid must make them taste bad.

[Crunchy Frog]

37. We tried giving them chunks of Repuke meat

at the wildlife center where I worked. They wouldn't touch the stuff.

[raccoon]

55. But let's KEEP TRYING. nt

[ThumperDumper]

2. I see them all the time...

near where I work on the East side of Denver.

It's kind of an industrial area with a lot of factories and warehouses - lots of railroad tracks. I lock up at night and come out shortly after sunset when there is still some light. They come out and run along the edge of all the buildings, sticking their noses under bushes looking for bunnies. (We're just filthy with bunnnies too.)

They're not terribly afraid of people. I've had them run up and stand 6 or 8 feet away from me. I told a woman in the office this and she freaked, "Aren't you afraid they'll bite you?"

It never even occurred to me to be afraid. I never thought for a moment that one would hurt me. There are VERY few animals on this planet that will go out of their way to hurt you.

I think it's kind of cool to see them, actually. -JJ

[HeeBGBz]

19. I hear them running through the hills at night

They sound like a herd of wild puppies yipping.

My dog before last was part coyote. Couldn't ask for a sweeter, more loving animal.

[raccoon]

56. How much? 1/2, 1/4? nt

[roguevalley]

5. I love them. But then, I have a weakness for canines. We have

wolves here and I have seen them. Dogs be wonderful. :)

[Inland]

8. The coyotes also have a weakness for canines.

Small dogs have disappeared out of people's yards.

[roguevalley]

12. so do the wolves. a friend recalled driving home in the dark and

coming up behind a pack of wolves chasing her dog. She barely got him out alive.

[kestrel91316]

44. Here within the Los Angeles city limits, in an area of suburbs built

in the 50s and 60s, coyotes are a known threat to small prey animals. Several years ago, a boy was walking his family's fru-fru poodle or yorkie or whatever on a leash out in front of their home. A coyote jumped out of the bushes and snatched the dog from his hands, leash and all. No more dog.

They routinely take cats, and have been known to TRY to take toddlers in back yards. A feline patient of mine several years ago was attacked by three coyotes in plain view of the family, who beat them off. The cat had severe nerve damage in its neck, but eventually made a full recovery after months with a feeding tube. Luckier than most.

[kenny blankenship]

9. Bring back the Sabre-Toothed Cat!

there are way too many wooly mammoths in this country running around unfossilized. Goddamn fatassed mastodons 'r eatin' up everything they can wrap their greedy trunks around --it's a strain on the ecology and resources.

[mduffy31]

10. The more...

of those motherfucking geese they kill the better. Here in MN there are parks covered in goose shit.

[papau]

11. LOL - well said! Although I might have chosen less colorful language!

:toast:

:-)

[mduffy31]

13. I stepped in some this summer and I had to throw out my favorite sandals.

[existentialist]

14. This is not an urban area, and we definitely have coyotes.

Their most documented interaction with the local dogs, however, is not eating them but rather crossbreeding with them.

[aquart]

27. Dinner or date?

There's a choice.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. I've met a coyote on my street

I was out for an early morning walk and saw what looked like a mangy dog trotting toward me. It was not aggressive -- it looked scared. I live near a large public open space where they live and it's not unusual to see them there or hear them howling. They prowl down in the neighborhoods at the end of the dry season when their natural food supply is scarce. Cats and small dogs are not safe at night.

[OnionPatch]

16. Watch your cats!

I live in California. People here lose their cats all the time to coyotes. One of mine slipped out and disappeared last year. I'm sure it was coyotes. I see them all the time near my property.

They'll get dogs too but only small ones. We also lose small dogs to eagles out here! A woman I know watched as her tiny dog was snatched out of her yard by a golden eagle and flew away!

I keep big dogs, and my cats stay inside. Otherwise, I love hearing coyotes at night. Happy coyote watching!!

[LWolf]

24. I've always lived with coyotes.

If you keep animals, good fences are a must. Coyotes will "lure" dogs out to "play" at night, and decimate livestock given the chance. It's the rare cat that lives in coyote country and lives a normal lifespan, unless they are indoor cats.

I like coyotes. They are tough, resourceful, and flexible. I just keep my dog fenced in. I have a horse who has, since she was a weanling, made it her primary mission in life to guard against coyotes. They won't enter a pasture she's in, and she has occasionally played tail guard on trail rides with dogs along, to chase off any tailing us. Generally, unless they are calling for someone to come out and play, or unless they have a large prey animal down somewhere, I only see them alone or in pairs, and they don't bother us.

[TX-RAT]

42. I kill every one of them i see on my place.

Absolutely no room for them here.

[MuseRider]

17. They live in my back yard.

They are quite fun to watch and they actually play with my dogs (big dogs) by running the fence line with them at night and making quite a racket. I am just outside the city in what used to be (until 3 years ago) country. They have decreased but they are still here. In the spring when they have their babies they are really fun to watch. They are quite playful and I have even seen them playing chase and hide games with deer, always ending when one or the other gets bored.

[RedOnce]

18. I saw 4 under my balcony in Orange County, CA 6:30 am!

Lost a cat to them last year.

[OnionPatch]

23. Welcome to DU RedOnce

:hi:
I'm over here in Riverside County.

[RedOnce]

28. Thanks OP!

[shanti]

36. pretty common

in the socal hillsides.

[kestrel91316]

46. Hillsides, hell! Three years ago I encountered two of them right across

the street on my neighbor's front lawn after dusk. They were watching the dumpster over at the grocery store for rats and cats, I suspect. This is a residential neighborhood, half mile or maybe a mile from any chaparral, and is only 1/2 block from Ventura Blvd, the San Fernando Valley's main drag! And they were not the least bit afraid of me as I tried to run them off, concerned about my neighbor's cat.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

39. I housesat for a friend in Alta Laguna and went out on the veranda

and a coyote had her persian cat cornered...I chased him with a broom...also saw 2 hawks take her neighbor's yorkie off the balcony

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. They have condemned our cats to the house. But, they gotta make a living.

We live in a semi-rural area in Washington. There's a crew of them that come out most nights and sing. They did get one of our cats, which was a loss, but I don't blame the coyotes.

Our two cats are now condemned to watch the birds out the window and wish they could do their thing like the coyotes do theirs.

We do, however, rescue the odd mouse that makes it way in in to the delight of our natural born huntresses.

[radwriter0555]

21. Coyotes are part of the urban landscape in Los Angeles, mid city, right in

Beverly Hills, Hollywood, mid-wilshire and so on. I saw a pair a few years back on Wilshire near Highland running down the middle of the boulevard at 3am. There is a country club near there, and a little known river that surfaces in several locations for several blocks, creating a micro-habitat between Highland and Rimpau.

Several years ago in West Hollywood, a string of alleged cat mutilations turned out to be the the result of a coyote, and I believe the current string of "mutilations" that everyone is concerned about is just the same. But since they didn't ask me....

We tracked the Coyote appearances and reports, and linked cat disappearances to their sightings, and found also that they tended to hunt off the local feral cat populations. So in essence, they did as nature intended; kulled out over-populations of feral creatures while feeding their own.

Our sightings were in Beverly Hills (not surprisingly, since the city limits run up the mountains) all the way down to the Beverly Center and near Fairfax, all sightings again, being near known feral cat locations.

It's fascinating to know that such amazing creatures are right in our midst and are so rarely seen.

[B Calm]

22. I use to rabbit hunt. If I wanted to shoot a rabbit now, I would

have to hunt in city limits. Coyotes are following their prey..

[mopinko]

25. hope they are getting rats, too.

my only real bitch with ritchie daley is that the rat population seems to have exploded. i have been rooting for the coyotes around here for years. i love em. i worry about them eating poisoned rats, tho.

[AngryAmish]

31. I have not seen a rat in 2005.

We are doing real good on rats in my neck of the city.

[mopinko]

40. don't know what it is around here

i guess it is those damn plastic garbage cans. i have seen more rats this year than in all my 25 years in this city put together. indian boundary park duck pond is full of them. i saw a dozen of them there recently.

[Matariki]

26. Coyote in Downtown Seattle Federal Building

some years back, i remember some Crows chased Coyote down 1st Avenue into the Federal Building. The coyote ran into the elevator.

It was mythic. One of my favorite stories ever.

I looked for a link on google. Here's one:

http://eatthestate.org/02-15/StumpTalk.htm

on edit, another link: http://www.huumor.com/joke_3250

[stevedeshazer]

34. I remember that story. Here in Portland, one was seen on the MAX train:

[ErisFiveFingers]

29. Coyote has no competition....

As the article notes, they killed the mountain lions, wolves, and other predators, and now Coyote is all that's left... something of an imbalance.

I'd prefer the re-introduction of big cats and dogs (lions and wolves), but Coyote seems to be everywhere instead. Some form of poetic justice, I suppose, in that...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_%28mythology%29

edit: changed link

[pitohui]

30. oh i'd much rather be torn apart by coyotes than by geese

darn tootin :eyes:

sheesh

two wrongs don't make a right, rampaging coyotes out of habitat is just as bad as rampaging geese out of habitat, at least the geese have some meat on em if you cook em right

[AngryAmish]

32. KILL the GEESE

They have been messing up my golf courses for years.

[Inland]

48. Everyone's been looking at a way to control the geese

This looks like a pretty good one.

[NNN0LHI]

33. These have come back strong in northern Illinois also

As have gray fox, red fox, wild turkeys, badgers, white tail deer, and all kinds of other critters. I get to watch them behind my house with binoculars for miles out. Had a red fox family going up a tree near my house all summer eating berries. Never even knew fox climbed trees before then. Only seen 2 bobcats in 16 years around here but I think there are a lot more. In spring my back yard is damn near covered with rabbits but by fall they are scarce as hens teeth. Coyotes likely get most of them but I find bobcat paw prints all over too. My cat knows better than to stay out after dark around here.

Don

[Inland]

47. Pretty. nt

[Crunchy Frog]

35. We had them in the field across from my condo in Colorado.

They would start yipping it up in the middle of the night. It always used to sound like a bunch of teenagers partying.:D

[Thirtieschild]

38. After years of living in the city

we are five miles from a small town, within sight of a national forest, have either seen or seen prints/scat of coyotes, mountain lions, javelina, fox, bear, skunk, jackrabbits, cottontails, mule deer, elk. A feral cat in the area appears to have survived for over a year; we tried to catch him/her in a humane trap but caught a skunk instead. The dogs can only go out in the dog run at night, also at dusk, dawn. I particularly worry about our 16-pound poodle/bichon mix. We occasionally hear coyotes yipping, have been surprised we don't hear them more often.

[TX-RAT]

50. I particularly worry about our 16-pound poodle/bichon mix.

And you should, I personally had to watch as 5 coyotes chewed up one of my best pointers. He weighed about 65 lbs, they got to him about 350 yards out in front of me. All i had was a 20ga shotgun, totally useless at that range. they chewed him up so bad he had to be put down. Kill them all. I'd rather have Bobcats, they don't just kill for shits and giggles.

[Thirtieschild]

51. I'm so sorry for your loss.

That must have been torture for you. I'd worried that our 65-pound Chow/Collie/?? mix might meet a mountain lion, had figured he was too shy to respond to coyotes offering to play. Play and then pounce. I know they can be incredibly aggressive - heard about someone walking a small dog on a leash in the Membres Valley, and a coyote made away with the dog, leash and all. When our Poodle/Bichon walks with us, DH wears a canvas doggie bag for him to ride in when he gets tired. (He has four legs, but only three of them work.) I know coyotes need to eat too (DH wrote a novel about a man-eating tiger loose in the mountains of North Georgia that was somewhat sympathetic to the tiger - it's coming out in paperback in December, BTW), and that we moved into their territory, but I still worry.

Where are you in Texas? I grew up in the Panhandle. Lots of coyotes around, but they didn't come into town. Or if they did, I didn't know it.

[TX-RAT]

53. 80 miles south of Lubbock

[Inland]

54. Wow, the article says our urban coyotes are timid

Taking on a sixty five pound pointer in a pack doesn't sound like their MO here, but probably, any coyote that brazen in an urban area is going to get hunted down and killed. Cowardice and working at night are survival traits.

[noonwitch]

41. They're in the outskirts of Detroit, too

Not in Warren, where I live, but in places like Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Ille. They've been on Grosse Ille for a while.

The idea of coyotes so close does not thrill me. I like letting my dog run around my fenced-in yard without me worrying about that threat. I also feed a couple of stray cats and would be worried that coyotes would eat them or their babies.

[alfredo]

43. Coyotes will eat anything under 20lbs. Don't leave your baby

outside unattended. fluffy fail to return home. Likely your kitty is now compost.

Coyotes have a bad habit of fouling the tobacco sitting in bales in barns and warehouses.

[pdxmom]

45. Live right outside of Portland, OR. Have a neighborhood

coyote that I run into a lot of mornings when I go out to get my paper. He/she and I have come to terms with each other. I don't talk to him, he trots off through my neighbor's back yard and into the park.

I also have raccoons, possums, red-tailed hawks, beaver and nutria that I see pretty regularly.

And this is a suburban neighborhood. Just happen to have a park and wetland nearby.

[MadHound]

49. Gotta love Mother Nature at work

Geese are becoming abundant in urban settings, so send in the coyotes!
We're going to experience more and more of this as urban areas continue to encroahment into wild places. Deer are also becoming major problems in urban areas, since they have few or no wild predators in most areas.

Fortunately here in Missouri our bio-diversity is making a bounce back. We've not only got geese, coyotes and deer, but also bobcats, bears, and even the mountain lion is starting to make a reappearance.

[htuttle]

52. Saw one in a Milwaukee suburb in 1983 or so

It was about 4 am, I was just getting home (college daze). It was standing right outside my driveway in New Berlin (where I was renting at the time).

Coyotes are very, very smart. Probably smarter than racoons, and racoons can hotwire cars!

[dbackjon]

57. We could use some more in my Neighborhood

To keep the cat population under control. We used to have coyotes until they cleared/developed a nearby ridge top - now the feral cat population has exploded. Damn cats lie in wait under the bird feeders.

The only good outdoor cat is a dead one.