Neighborhood on edge after coyote attacks 2-year-old girl in Irvine park

[question everything]

Source: Orange County Register

IRVINE – Animal control officers on Saturday were hunting for a coyote that attacked a 2-year-old girl close to Silverado Park in the northeast part of the city, leaving the nearby community on edge.

The incident happened at about 5:50 p.m. Friday at the intersection of Equinox and Silverado, when a mother and her twin daughters were walking the family’s dog.

One of the girls went to retrieve a dog-waste bag and was bending over when a coyote came out of the bushes, jumped on top of her and grabbed her by the neck, said Lt. Kent Smirl of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on Saturday. The mother and several other people ran up to the coyote and scared the animal off, he said.

The girl had bruises but was not bitten and her skin wasn’t punctured, so she won’t need rabies shots, he added.


Read more: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/coyote-662894-dad-scared.html

[NutmegYankee]

1. I'm seeing them now in Connecticut.

Not quite as often as wild turkey's and deer (5x a week or more), but they seem to be comfortable approaching close to human dwellings. I hike every week and am not concerned about an attack - they don't attack people much at all.

[question everything]

3. With the severe drought in California, everyone is getting depserate

First, there have been sprawled into wild life habitats and now lack of water and vegetation that start the food chain.

[Cleita]

4. I have had all my soaker hoses chewed through with critters looking for water.

I now put out pans of water for them.

[question everything]

19. Thank you. I always have "bird baths"

one is on the ground, so that squirrels and rabbits (and an occasional racoon) can drink.

[NutmegYankee]

12. It's hard for me to imagine just how bad it is there.

Eastern woodlands are very different from the much more arid West. For instance, I took this yesterday on my hike:

[GGJohn]

8. I see them on our farm all the time,

if they're just passing through, I give them a free pass, if they're stalking my livestock, I kill them.

[Cleita]

2. I once worked as a campground host and I used to have to get into the face of campers

who used to let their toddlers wander around without much supervision. I was warning about cougars and bears not coyotes, but those predators look upon small children as big fat rabbits. I'm going to assume the coyote might have thought the same because our jack rabbits are about the size of small children and often sit upright. If you are out in a neighborhood that is known to have coyotes, you need to keep your pets and small children close to you and indoors when you can't be there to keep an eye on them.

[Codeine]

5. I used to walk my dog in the hills here in Southern California,

a little island of hilly desert area in a decidedly urban environment, and even there we used to get stalked by coyotes looking for me to stop paying attention or for the dog to slip off the leash so they could have a terrier-sized snack. They always stayed at least twenty or thirty feet away, but were pretty fearless otherwise. I'd just huck rocks at them until they got tired of dodging and wander off.

[Cleita]

10. They are bold and especially in small environments as you describe.

Where I live they still have miles of sparsely habituated hills to hunt in so we get visited about twice a month by one of the packs because they can range more.

[Android3.14]

6. On edge? An entire community?

Talk of the town, I can buy. Taking extra precautions and the ammophiles yipping it up, I can buy.

But the entire community "on edge", as in ready to do something irrational, nervous, and ready to go bug shit crazy? Right.

Hyperbole. It's an American tradition.

[passiveporcupine]

25. It says neighborhood on edge,

not town, or entire community.

[Android3.14]

30. Still.

[passiveporcupine]

34. you must not have children

And you are pretty good at using hyperbole yourself.

[Android3.14]

40. The Birds was a movie

The Birds was a movie, and most folks realize it. I'm confident that there will be some folks who are going bananas in fear that coyotes are going to come after their children. There are parents out there who think drama is more important than simple pragmatic caution, but only a few parents.

Most folks, though, avoid going bananas, and that's why I take exception to the headline.

And I have two children, thank-you-very-much.

I can use hyperbole a billion times a day, and it will never be an issue, because when I post to DU,
I'm
not
writing
the
news.

[LanternWaste]

44. Not a very creative way to move the goalposts...

Not a very creative way to move the goalposts...

On Edge: acutely sensitive; nervous; tense; impatient; eager. Seems accurate to me-- but then again, I tend to infer meaning of a word from definition rather than bias.

[Android3.14]

46. Again, a few might be "on the edge"

as in "In a precarious position; also, in a state of keen excitement, as from danger or risk."
An entire neighborhood?
Hardly.

[KittyWampus]

45. Read the article. A coyote has been confronting numerous people for a while.

[Android3.14]

47. So you think the entire neighborhood is "on the edge"

This is an accurate statement to you?
I'm sorry, but most people would not be "on the edge". Most might keep an eye out for the critter, but being on the edge is far too strong a word, as is the implication that the whole neighborhood is "In a precarious position; also, in a state of keen excitement, as from danger or risk."

If this entire group of folks is "on the edge" because of a strange coyote, what would you describe people learning that their jet plane is going to have to make it back to the airport without an engine? Are the "In a precarious position; also, in a state of keen excitement, as from danger or risk"?

Yes. The latter would be an accurate description of "on the edge" rather than people keeping an eye out for a coyote.

But what the hell. Everything is "awesome".

[paleotn]

7. Drought makes everyone desperate. (nt)

[C Moon]

9. I grew up near the foothills in Southern California. At that time the area had few homes.

One day some of my siblings and I climbed "over the fence" and were playing near some deserted railroad tracks.

It was near dusk, and at one point, in the distance, we noticed a pack of coyotes prancing towards us (4 or 5 of them).

My little brother had white blonde hair and was about 3-4 years old.

We scurried to climb back over the wall as the pack continued trekking quickly towards us. I remember lifting up my little brother and putting him on the wall and looking back at the pack. I know coyotes aren't known to harm humans, and it's probably not a good idea to run, but when a pack of them are coming toward you, it's quite scary.

[yeoman6987]

11. Just awful.

Mayors of communities need to do something about coyotes as they are everywhere. Mayors do have an obligation to making their constituents safe and this mayor failed big time.

[Travis_0004]

29. How did this mayor fail?

Are we to shoot every coyotee on sight? The fact is coyotees very rarely attack humans, and sometimes this just happens.

What should this mayor have done?

[One_Life_To_Give]

42. They never pay attention till it affects the important people

Coyote Den next to Elementary school in Hull. Learn to live with them.

Coyote on Beacon Hill and Boston Common. Animal control on overtime to eradicate the issue.

[Xithras]

48. Eh, no.

In California, wild animals are the jurisdiction of the state DFW. Municipal animal control officers typically don't get involved with wildlife problems unless there is an imminent threat.

Besides, most cities in California also either use a "weak-mayor" or "council-manager" system. In those systems, the authority to run the city lays with the city council, and not the mayor. The mayor's only job is to implement the edicts handed down by the council, and to act as a face to the city. In a "council-manager" city, the mayor doesn't even get that much authority, and day-to-day city operations are run by a paid employee known as a City Manager.

A quick check shows that Irvine uses a "council-manager" system. The city council runs the city and hands down edicts to their city manager to implement. Like most "council-manager" cities, the mayors only job is to act as the chairperson at council meetings and on various boards, and to act as a community representative at various events.

[CreekDog]

49. smooth

it's less than a half mile from a huge open space preserve (owned by the County, not the city).

but go ahead, keep posting uninformed things.

[Historic NY]

13. They camped out in my backyard last year....

glad to see them gone.

[catchnrelease]

14. They're everywhere now

We live in a residential area of Long Beach and on the online community pages for LB and Lakewood there are sitings almost daily. Coyotes trotting down busy main streets, remains of pets left on lawns or in the parks, etc.

People are finally waking up to the realization that you can't leave your cats and small dogs outside anymore. One of our neighbors was walking her small/medium sized dog one morning and two coyotes ran out from between houses, one of them grabbing the dog. She was able to scare them off and the dog only had minor wounds. But they are really bold now.

The city's attitude is they are here now and you need to be careful. Otherwise they are not doing anything about reports of sitings. Oh, they did put up a website for reports but I think it's mostly to make people feel that the city is 'doing something'. On the online pages people seem to be divided between 'kill them all' and they were here before the houses came so let them be.

[Rozlee]

16. I'm sorry for your troubles.

We had problems with coyotes here in Texas for a while during our drought, mostly for those of us living in the wooded areas of the Hill Country. We had to keep an eye on our domestic animals and since coyotes can forage around both in the day and night, it was rather nerve racking. They didn't seem that frightened of humans after a while, coming close to our homes and only running off a short distance when we'd come out to scare them away. The mountain lions were a problem as well and we'd find carcasses from raccoons and other woodland creatures all over our property, until the creatures moved away on their migrations. We've been having record rainfalls and I hope it keeps them away for awhile. But, with urban sprawl and more subdivisions being built deeper into the woods of the Hill Country, I suspect that man and nature will be clashing more as time goes on.

[catchnrelease]

20. Definitely urban sprawl is part of the problem

It's interesting to me how many people will say 'Oh they were never here before, why are they coming around now?' I guess they don't realize that even in our area it was once open fields and dairies, so the wildlife was spread out and didn't have to interact with humans and their pets. Little by little all of that open area has squeezed down to a few parks and basically no open areas. Are the wild critters supposed to just disappear? The ones that can adapt to man's presence (and trashy way of living imo) have thrived while the others died out or got pushed up into the mountains.

I'm honestly surprised how many of the locals here have commented on the side of the wildlife, saying that people need to learn to co-exist and be more mindful of their pets and not leaving food out overnight and closing trash cans/bins. Sometimes I think for as smart as we're supposed to be, humans are less adaptable than other animals.

[AngryAmish]

41. I see one or two a year inside Chicago city limits

If I count suburban golf courses double that.

I am up at dawn 90% of days. See more urban critters then.

Five years ago the coppers had to kill a mointain lion in Roscoe Village, of all places.

[Scootaloo]

27. Wiping out the big predators left room for the smaller adaptable ones

There really isn't a "kill them all" solution. If they have a presence in a city, then they are absolutely present in the wilderness around the city. Killing the ones in the city will just free up territory for the next generation to move into... and coyotes aren't wolves, they're not pack animals by nature, you can't kill a few dozen in a territory and watch the remainder collapse.

They're basically like big raccoon or really, really big rats. once they're there, they're going to stay there, and all that can be done is rely on prevention first.

[catchnrelease]

32. Absolutely right

That's one of the problems with convincing people that the kill solution doesn't work is that they don't understand the 'nature abhors a vaccuum' idea. They seem to believe that, as you said, if we just have them all trapped and killed or relocated that the problem will be solved. Also they don't understand that if some start disappearing the reproduction rate of the remaining population will just increase. And you can't just trap a bunch of animals and take them to another area and drop them off with no consequences. A city adjacent to Long Beach has started a trap/kill policy so it will be interesting to see what happens once that gets going.

Urban dwellers have been raised on too many Disney movies!

[No Vested Interest]

15. Information please: is it true that coyotes will

mate with domestic dogs?

Could that account for some of the proliferation we are now seeing?

If they are interbreeding, would they also tend to be less afraid of humans, and have less fear of going near and into populated areas?

[Rozlee]

17. Coydogs are extremely rare except in captivity.

Coyotes won't mate with domestic dogs unless there is no other choice and no coyote mates present themselves, plus the pups don't have a good survival rate. There's a better chance of a dog/wolf paring than a coyote/dog one.

[No Vested Interest]

18. Thanks. Now I know.

[jberryhill]

26. No, but coyote/wolf hybrids are becoming more prominent

They are better adapted to the urban environment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2014/07/01/coywolves-coyote-wolf-hybrids-are-prowling-rock-creek-park-and-d-c-suburbs/

The coyotes that pressed north into Canada came across the remnants of wolf populations and interbred, creating a hybrid creature that’s small enough to live undetected among humans, but large enough to feast on fawns (though perhaps not full-sized deer).

[No Vested Interest]

36. OOO -Scarey.

I live in a fairly-large Midwest city, houses all around with some wooded area intermixed.

About 8 yrs ago, in the wee hours of the night, I heard animal noises and sounds - like fighting - in my smallish enclosed backyard.
Too frightened to even look, I called the police, who responded quickly.
Upon hearing my story, they went to the area and reported that there was a seriously injured deer and that it would have to be put down.
It appeared that another animal had chased it and attacked it; we presumed the attacker was a coyote.
The SPCA dragged the dead deer to my curb, where a larger SPCA truck came the next day and took the carcass away.

Nothing like that incidence before or since.
Deer only began appearing in our neighborhood in the last 20 years, and now are regular visitors. Before that, raccoons were the wildest animals in the neighborhood.

[question everything]

39. Same problem. We spread our developments into what used to be area that hosted wildlife

deer, coyotes, racoons, foxes with vegetation to provide food and shelter. But now they have to come into cities and suburbs in search of food.

[Ned Flanders]

21. Love/hate relationship

I love/hate Canis Latrans. They're brilliant creatures, thriving despite (or because of) the urbanization of this country. But they are brutal killers, slaying their bigger prey slowly, killing them by biting their rear end area over and over until they get into the body cavity and, uh, well I guess I've painted an ugly enough picture. They killed over a dozen of my cats, but the worse was when Mom accidentally left Daisy out past dark and they slaughtered her in our driveway.

Growing up in Laverne, Southern Ca, they were everywhere. IDK if the drought was still bad in 1979, but that's when one of the neighbor kids almost got taken by a coyote. Another guy got bit trying to save his dog, while jogging. Check out the link for a long list of attacks. I had no idea they've gone after humans so often.

[link:http://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev15c.htm|

[LiberalElite]

22. There's been a few seen in NYC recently nt

http://www.amny.com/news/coyotes-in-nyc-other-wild-animals-to-become-increasing-nyc-presence-experts-say-1.10335971

-snip-
New York's getting more diverse -- and not in the way that you think.

The recent coyote sightings in Manhattan and Queens are just the beginnings in what experts call an increasing trend of wild animals finding their way into the city.

Experts, however, say New Yorkers shouldn't panic.

"It is unusual, but they are abundant in New York State," Sarah Aucoin, director of Urban Park Rangers, said of the coyotes. "It's a matter of course that they are expanding."
-snip-

[onehandle]

23. This is a job for the NRA.

Roving bands of idiots with guns spreading far and wide.

Just guessing...

[romanic]

24. Well

if developers stopped building sprawling overpriced subdivisions in the wilderness, these coyotes wouldn't be wandering around to bite little Susie or Billy on the playground. :/

[Scootaloo]

28. Actually...

Coyotes are the ones doing the expanding into human territories.

or, as the coyotes would describe it, "former wolf territory"

[mopinko]

31. becoming quite numerous in chicago.

a neighbor insisted that he saw a wolf sniffing at my back gate in the night. i took it with a grain of salt because at 3 am this neighbor was likely pretty drunk. but he swore the animal loped to the end of the alley and cleared a 5' wall without missing a step.
could have been a coywolf, which has also been seen around here, they say. not sure a coyote could have made that leap.

if they can make a dent in the rodent population, i think they are all good.

[GGJohn]

33. Believe me when I say that a coyote can easily clear a 5' fence without missing a beat. eom.

[mopinko]

37. ok, i will.

like i said, i took the report w a large grain of salt.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

35. Quite a few coyotes pass through our yard

they run away when they see us

[Myrina]

43. Same here in Central Indiana ...

.... there is a family that lives in the woods about 3/4 of a mile from my house. I walk my dogs back there often & most of the time we don't see anything because we're out in broad daylight. The few times we've seen them has been near dusk in winter, trotting across the soccer field likely scavenging for geese, but they have never done more than stop, look at us (my dogs are 100 pounders, not to be reckoned with), and then trot off in the opposite direction.

We were also treated to a coyote symphony a couple summers back: must have been in love or brokenhearted - the howling at 2 AM made the hair on my arms stand straight up.

Neighbors who work the early-early shift have said they've seen the adult(s) scavenging in the neighborhood just around sun up.

For the most part they keep to themselves, and this is a neighborhood full of dogs.

[displacedtexan]

38. We see them in Golden Gate Park and warn others to keep dogs leashed.

There are even warning signs in the park now.

[cobeal]

50. Suspicious story

I have lived in Southern California for 60 years. I have grown up around coyotes, bob cats, and mountain lions. Most of the big cats have been killed or driven away although some have begun to reappear.

The coyotes have stayed with us almost constantly. They are very small. They do hunt small things and I would say that keeping an eye on children is a given wherever you are. Predator humans, predator animals might target your child.

THE SUSPICIOUS PART OF THIS STORY IS THAT A LONE COYOTE SUPPOSEDLY JUMPED ONTO A HUMAN CHILD AND BIT ITS NECK AND DID NOT INFLICT ANY WOUND.

Coyotes are typically very skittish animals. They sometimes hunt in groups and they count on frightening and confusing the prey by yipping in a way that makes the group seem larger and everywhere. The prey panics and runs and gets bitten until it weakens. If the prey is not fast enough to run like that the coyote grabs the neck in a very powerful predator move and kills it.

I have also watched a mother coyote leave a group of pups and go hunting rabbits or cats or anything to feed the pups. They tend to be found in that configuration when the pups are small.

When they grab a small prey item they do not mess around. To do so risks injury or death. They immediately hit the neck and snap the backbone with a single bite or series of extremely fast chomps. The prey is instantly paralyzed and grasped and carried away to a safe place.

If that was a coyote I can not imagine what it was doing jumping on the back of a living child in the presence of other large humans and then failing to inflict any wound.

I might buy the story that something frightened a sleeping coyote so much that it failed to think and jumped up to escape and a child happened to be in the place it landed before it ran off.

It is just entirely illogical and sounds like someone trying to create a scare because they want someone to eliminate what they perceive as a threat.

Coyotes are part of the Southern California ecosystem and are a valuable part of the balance that keeps small rodents and other small animals from getting out of control. They eat rats, mice, rabbits and other small creatures that can breed out of control and spread disease or destruction of crops. Mostly they hunt at night in my experience.

The size of their litters varies with the presence of prey. There is a cycle that happens when rain cycles increase and decrease. More water means more plant life and the number plant eating creatures such as insects, mice, rats, and rabbits increase followed by the size of meat eating predator populations. When the rain is down the opposite is true. All in all it is somewhat of a steady state.

If a person wants to live in a place with no wildlife I would suggest some high rise building with a pool on the top and a gym in the basement so he/she can live a completely sanitary lifestyle and never encounter any wild animal.

This story wreaks. Either the reporter has failed to accurately duplicate the actual information or the persons making the report are mistaken or intentionally misrepresenting this information.

Occasionally people will feed coyotes and acclimate them to humans to the point that they seek out humans hoping that human will provide food but not to eat the human. We have had neighbors come and go who participated in such activities and then when they left the coyotes tended to look closer to other homes for handouts. This requires reverse conditioning until they go back to the fully wild state.

The practice of somewhat taming wild predators is of course dangerous because they are more comfortable around humans and might be in close proximity when some small child is unattended and possibly decide it is no different from any other small prey creature.

Many times in my life from the time I was a small teenager hiking above my parent's home to more recent times when watching out for my cat in the back of the house I have run directly at a group of coyotes who were attempting to cause some prey animal to become disorientated long enough for one to get in and make a kill. With my arms high and voice screaming ferociously, the coyotes ran in the other direction.

They are not very dangerous to humans who understand what they are doing. They are very skittish creatures.

I wish all these people who are the offspring of the people who used to visit California when I was young and ask us how we could live in such a primitive environment would just go back to New York City and leave our wildlife alone.

[uppityperson]

51. More recent story says the girl got a small wound from being bit

http://www.dailypilot.com/news/tn-dpt-me-0530-irvine-coyotes-20150529,0,1152021.story

...O'Donnell was in his apartment near the park when the girl was pounced on by the coyote at about 6 p.m. while she and her mother and twin sister were walking the family dog. The child's mother and neighbors quickly rescued the girl, who suffered a superficial bite wound on the back of her neck.....

[Socal31]

52. Not suspicious at all.

Injured/hungry/thirsty/sick animals of all species will exhibit behavior outside of the norm.

[DesertFlower]

53. i'm north of phoenix

in the desert. there's still enough critters for them to go after, but last week i was outside with a friend and someone who i'm hiring to do my outside lighting. we heard them -- they were obviously killing something and were very close -- there's a mountain across the street. i've never heard them like that. had to go inside. i don't want to hear anything being killed. my friend mentioned it today. it was "eerie".

nicole wallace said her husband saw one in central park -- thought it was a dog.