Interesting thread here with a lot of diverse opinions.
What started out as simple post about a pretty scary situation has surfaced a much bigger and more complex issue where it's really difficult to find a balanced perspective.
I live in a large city and we have coyotes roaming around. Heck, just a few months ago here in Chicago we had a coyote stroll into a Quizno's sandwich shop and try to jump the counter to grab some food. This happened during a weekday, in broad daylight, on Michigan Avenue almost directly across the street from the Art Institute -- an extremely busy area of town with lots of tourists, business people and students walking around!
The coyote misjudged the jump and ended up landing in a cooler display of sodas and beverages...and there it stayed until animal control came and picked it up. The news footage of this was pretty funny.
Just a few days before this, my sister reported to me that she saw a coyote loping along the el train tracks towards downtown! She had seen this in the middle of the day while waiting for a train and at a point where the el train tracks were running on ground level, but down the middle of a major expressway. (Don't know what Mr. or Ms. Coyote would do when he/she got to the part of the system where the tracks truly did elevate.)
One more thing to mention: the suburbs around here are experiencing terrible overpopulation problems with deer. The deer are not only a nuisance because they eat landscaping, but the number of auto accidents due to deer collisions is mounting.
My point is that these creatures have learned/are learning to adapt to living in the margins of our communities. Too bad we humans haven't yet been able to figure out a better way to balance the situation or take advantage of the natural processes around us to balance it better.
If there was a safe way to introduce wolves (a major deer predator) into the 'burbs to cull some of the deer, that may be an acceptable solution to many folks. After all, it is a natural process. But we haven't figured out a safe way to introduce predators to areas with large numbers of humans.
Personally, I think having the coyotes roaming around the city isn't too bad. We have plenty of rats that need to be eliminated. (In fact, I commented to my sister regarding her coyote sighting, "Well, maybe it has a den in the subway tunnels and is subsisting on rats.").
If Mr. or Ms. Coyote would just stick to hunting those "nuisance" animals (including the "cute bunnies" that regularly mow down the lettuce, beans, etc. that my neighbors and I try to grow), then I'm sure we'd all feel comfortable with that.
The situation is just more complex than that, though.
What started out as simple post about a pretty scary situation has surfaced a much bigger and more complex issue where it's really difficult to find a balanced perspective.
I live in a large city and we have coyotes roaming around. Heck, just a few months ago here in Chicago we had a coyote stroll into a Quizno's sandwich shop and try to jump the counter to grab some food. This happened during a weekday, in broad daylight, on Michigan Avenue almost directly across the street from the Art Institute -- an extremely busy area of town with lots of tourists, business people and students walking around!
The coyote misjudged the jump and ended up landing in a cooler display of sodas and beverages...and there it stayed until animal control came and picked it up. The news footage of this was pretty funny.
Just a few days before this, my sister reported to me that she saw a coyote loping along the el train tracks towards downtown! She had seen this in the middle of the day while waiting for a train and at a point where the el train tracks were running on ground level, but down the middle of a major expressway. (Don't know what Mr. or Ms. Coyote would do when he/she got to the part of the system where the tracks truly did elevate.)
One more thing to mention: the suburbs around here are experiencing terrible overpopulation problems with deer. The deer are not only a nuisance because they eat landscaping, but the number of auto accidents due to deer collisions is mounting.
My point is that these creatures have learned/are learning to adapt to living in the margins of our communities. Too bad we humans haven't yet been able to figure out a better way to balance the situation or take advantage of the natural processes around us to balance it better.
If there was a safe way to introduce wolves (a major deer predator) into the 'burbs to cull some of the deer, that may be an acceptable solution to many folks. After all, it is a natural process. But we haven't figured out a safe way to introduce predators to areas with large numbers of humans.
Personally, I think having the coyotes roaming around the city isn't too bad. We have plenty of rats that need to be eliminated. (In fact, I commented to my sister regarding her coyote sighting, "Well, maybe it has a den in the subway tunnels and is subsisting on rats.").
If Mr. or Ms. Coyote would just stick to hunting those "nuisance" animals (including the "cute bunnies" that regularly mow down the lettuce, beans, etc. that my neighbors and I try to grow), then I'm sure we'd all feel comfortable with that.
The situation is just more complex than that, though.
