co-worker pestered by coyotes

[M1911]

Greybeard said:

Many surburbanites may (reluctantly) recognize that humans taking over vast amounts of the predators' habitat limits their options. What most suburbanites do not know though, is the impact that CATS (BOTH house and feral) have on the small wildlife population. Cats, also being natural-born hunters, can wreck havoc on nature's balance of small animals. This is sometimes first recognized (or intentionally NOT recognized) by a dramatic reduction or disappearance of song birds.

I've had the privilege of serving cats for most of my life. Some of them have been outside cats. One, that we just lost to kidney failure a few years ago, was a terrific huntress. In her five years with us (we adopted her as an adult), she may have gotten one bird (we found a bluejay carcass once). She got tons of chipmunks, mice, and voles, many of which she deposited at my wife's feet. Sometimes they were even dead by then -- I guess she was trying to teach us how to hunt.

Since her demise, we've had to start using various methods to poison, trap, and/or shoot the varmints that she used to control. Her brother is getting elderly and has mostly retired from hunting and her replacement was declawed by her former slaves and thus is an indoor cat.

Decimating songbirds? Only in their little kitty dreams.

Regarding Eastern coyotes, yup they certainly are bold. A few years ago, I was driving home one summer evening, just about dusk, through Wellesley, MA. This is a leafy suburb about 15 miles west of downtown Boston. I was driving down a two-lane road with houses on either side when I spotted the coyote in my lane. I slowed down and stopped about a car length from the coyote. The coyote stared at me for a bit, then sauntered across the road to the shoulder, where he stopped and stared at me.

Around here, the coyotes have killed a number of housecats and dogs. They've even attacked fairly large dogs (golden retriever). A couple years ago, on Cape Cod, a coyote bit a small child. No, the coyote did not have rabies.

I agree with the suggestion of OC spray for your friend. While I'd love to shoot the buggers, the local gendarmes would take a dim view of that.

M1911

[LawDog]

I don't know about the rest of the country, but out in West Texas and here in North Texas the yodel dogs can be pretty much a pain-in-the-butt. OC spray works on Uncle Coyote only because it startles him -- prairie pooches apparently lack the ability to taste oleoresins -- and once he's been sprayed a time or two he just shrugs it off.

Yodel dogs are also a bit smarter than most of humanity. If he's got a choice between running around to find a rabbit, then running his butt off to catch said bunny, or sauntering over to the nearest suburban developement and picking off a purse poodle or table tabby at a lope, well ol' canis latrans isn't going to waste any more energy than is necessary.

If your friend has seen one yodel dog, it's a lead pipe cinch that there are two to eight more coyotes in the area -- a permanently bonded pair and their older offspring.

The sure way to get rid of a pack of coyotes is to kill one of the bonded couple (the 'alpha pair'). If Mr. Coyote comes a cropper, the widow Coyote and her chilluns will generally pull up their stakes and move to safer country.

Unfortunately, this usually means that a newly-wedded couple will discover the prime, available, just-abandoned hunting territory, move in and begin raising young 'uns.

LawDog