I’ve read Moscow is overrun with wild dogs, and they like having them because they keep the rats down. Which is weird because there are signs all over here saying to pick up after your dog because the feces attracts rats.

Just in the last few years, I’ve seen plenty of coyotes (and signs of coyotes) in suburban Cincinnati and southwest Ohio valley. Unfortunately, most of the coyotes I’ve seen have been reduced to bloody smears along the side of the Interstate, but I have seen a few actively hunting, especially after a snowfall at dusk.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the reintroduction of the “painter” (i.e. Puma concolor ssp.) that once ruled the Ohio Valley. The urban deer are out of control, and there’s no way to reasonably cull deer that live in urban and suburban areas.

As a long-time cat owner and ailurophile, I must say that there are plenty of reasons to keep your cats indoors at all times, and coyotes are way down the list. I’m confident that the primary predator of outdoor domestic cats is still the deadly Five-Door Hatchback. Keeping cats indoors will automatically add five years to their life — more, if you give them plenty of exercise and play time.

While they do kill the occasional small dog (which we call “coyote bait”) or cat, they also do an excellent job of keeping the opossum population under control. They were here first, and I am happy to share my neighborhood with them.

The Loop is a richer place for having invited the World back in. Keep it going. (Gosh, how I miss that town.)

Glad to see we’ve started a little discussion here. I want to thank #13 Johnathan for re-iterating some of the important points I made in the actual article. The funny part was that the animal control claimed that they were introduced on purpose, while that just isn’t true!

The animals ARE a part of the Urban Coyote Ecology and Management project, as both Johnathan and I mentioned, and they were already in the cities and suburbs. By tracking them, we get a better idea of where they range, which would hopefully help us keep an eye out for areas where keeping a pet outside might not be a great idea. Each coyote has a specific territory, so it’s easy to know where they are likely to be.

Thanks for reading and commenting, all!

Jen

25 fatal dog attacks so far in 2010. Good thing we don’t keep coyotes in our houses.

#16. 2 people in the history of record keeping as a fatal attack from a coyote. Perhaps we should re-evaluate what kind of pets we keep.

And, they’ll need a few dozen more when Axelrod gets back to Chitown.

Are you kidding? You must of not have seen many feral cats. “Add beauty to any city” lol OK cat lady.

How are Chicago people stupid and cruel for having Coyotes? How are these cats any different? How are Coyotes any more dangerous than the coon and possums that we already have in the area? I’ve seen rabid racoons infect many dogs in my area of Chicago to where they had to be put down…. how are Coyotes any worse than that?

I think these Coyotes are fine, i’ve seen them around my neighborhood and nobody has had any problems with them that we havn’t had already with the other animals in the area. If you can’t watch your pets or let cats roam the neighborhood its your own fault for not paying attention if they attack it as there is already PLENTY of danger before Coyotes returned to this area.

It documents numerous attacks on children and even deaths from coyotes.

Thanks for providing that good information about coyotes. There have been enough Wolf and Mountain Lion introduction programs in several western states, that it’s easy for people to just assume, coyote introduction is going on in the Chicago area also. You’re right about the deer too. Hell, in Iowa, the Mountain Lions introduced into the state won’t even hunt deer, they go for the rural farmers pet dogs and cats instead! So more deer-auto accidents every year, AND if you’re a farmer, you have to keep a pack of hounds instead of just one or two dogs.

I grew up on a farm in western Iowa, and farmers who kept several cats around the farm, always had much less of a rodent problem getting into their granaries. So cats who are not pampered house pets will catch plenty of rats and mice. I’ve observed it for myself. I have a farm cat from Iowa at my home in east Denver Colorado in a dense urban neighborhood since this last summer. He’s brought in more dead mice from outside than birds. (He’s also killed a few juvenile rabbits too) So even though I like the idea of GPS tagging coyote’s so their urban setting behavior can be tracked and studied closer, I do not buy into the nonsense that increasing coyote populations is necessary to reduce the rodent population in urban areas. Coyote’s will go for the easier prey first, abandoned house cats and small dogs every time.

I would like to contribute a few items for consideration. Several posters have made statements that are misleading or downright wrong. I would encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to visit the website at the bottom of this message.

1. The idea that coyotes were INTRODUCED to the Chicago Metropolitan Area to control the rodent/mice/deer population…is downright silly. There is no need to INTRODUCE these animals–they subside in Chicago, have subsided in Chicago for many years, and will continue to be part of the urban fabric into the forseeable future. They do not need us to introduce them to Urban environments; they choose–and have the skills–to thrive here. Anyone who has an opportunity to look at maps of radio-collared coyotes (see link below) will be stunned by the number of coyotes in the CMA and their habitat. (Chicago residents: There is probably a coyote on your property as you read this message. If coyotes can survive around the drainage basin at the Schaumberg IKEA, they can probably make it in your neighborhood.)

2. That said, the ubiquity of the coyote population in the CMA should demonstrate that coyotes and humans (and their pets) live side-by-side comfortably. The idea that coyotes will eat humans is bilgewater. On the contrary, 99% of coyotes are afraid of humans; it’s the 1% that is intentionally fed by the local ignoramous that ends up biting said ignoramus. If you do not leave food outside and shield your compost pile you (and your pet/small child) will probably be fine. You are more likely to be bit by a stray dog or cat than by a coyote.

3. Coyote do not control the deer population–they cannot take down deer. While they do attack fawns (and slow down the deer population a bit), they are not the wolves you’ve seen on the Discovery Channel. In contrast, it is true that coyotes have dramatically altered the range and number of red fox living in the Chicago area. For further reading, please see:
http://urbancoyoteresearch.com/index.htm or http://urbancoyoteresearch.com/UrbanCoyoteManagementPDF.pdf Happy reading.

However, coyotes are vectors for giardia (a parasite passed through fecal contamination of water) in the Western portion of our country. A friend in Montana caught it twice – every camper there knows to boil stream water etc.

Now, on the East Coast urban foxes carry giardia according to my vet who said he sees 6-7 new cases of giardia in dogs in his practice per week. Why do I bother to mention this??? Last winter I came down with giardia from unknown sources. I had to research the symptoms on the internet, go to my GI doc, ask for a test (he thought I was nuts until the test results came back positive).

Just one more possible public health problem from the introduction of coyotes, although rats are probably (ugh) a bigger problem.

“The study also found that in small canyons where the coyote was absent, there was an increase in mid-sized predators such as cats, and a drastic decline in diversity or elimination of scrub-breeding birds. But in the larger canyons where coyotes were still present, the
scrub-breeding birds were also present.”

Also, Google “mesopredator” and “apex predator” for more related to this.