FOXSYLVANIA

– – Well, foxes are infringing on Detroit, bears are in many suburbs, and now coyotes are causing problems about 25 miles northeast of midtown Manhattan!- -Can the revolution be far behind?

In the New York City suburb of Rye, N.Y., two coyote attacks on little girls have police officers shooting at them, and parents keeping their kids inside on summer evenings.  A six-year-old and a three-year-old have been injured in separate attacks, with both girls being treated for rabies as a precaution.  The state Department of Environmental Conservation has given Rye permission to shoot coyotes on sight and to kill any that are trapped, according to a wildlife biologist for the department.

Coyote attacks are rare, with news media reporting only 142 coyote attacks on people in the U.S. and Canada between 1960 and 2006.   The only known fatality of a coyote attack involved a California toddler in the 1980’s.  The natural prey of coyotes includes rabbits, birds, and rodents but in suburbia easy food sources include garbage and pet food left out.  Some people even unwisely feed coyotes.  One coyote necropsy showed that the animal had eaten pork chops!

I prefer my coyotes to be the frustrated genius types who buy a lot of Acme products and fruitlessly pursue road runners…

This entry was posted on July 2, 2010 at 12:14 am and is filed under animal occurrences, environmental, furry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: coyote attacks