Neighbor attacked by coyote - surburban Ohio

[dave 911]

Monday night, a neighbor of mine (a big guy, probably 6'3" or so) was out in his driveway with his small dog (our cat is bigger) when a coyote approached them from his unfenced backyard and lunged at his dog. He jerked the dog up into the air by the chain, and started backing into the garage, while yelling at it. The coyote did not back down and followed him into the garage, where he opened his car door between he and the coyote. He then ran into the house, he and the dog were unharmed.

There have been a couple sightings over the last few months, but this is the first confrontation I've heard about. It's not like we live in the boonies... we're in a suburb, with some woods nearby.

Pretty scary, I thought coyotes were supposed to shy away from people....I was out running at 5am this morning and was thinking about maybe carrying some pepper spray with me? I'm definitely going to get some for the wife when she is out walking our dog.

[widgeon13]

Rabid I would guess. That is clearly not normal behavior.

[GH85Carrera]

A very hungry coyote will go for food. They are not a critter that backs down. Few humans are a threat to them since we are not allowed to shoot them like vermin.

[Z-man]

Maybe it was rabid? If your neighbor ran back - then I could understand why the coyote would attack - but you said he backed up. Also - if the little dog pee-d on the man, that could cause a coyote to get a little wild. Or maybe the coyote's offspring were on the other side of the yard, and your neighbor got between them.

Wild animals are unpredictable - as much as we think we are on the top of the food chain -- sometimes the tables can turn on us.

-Z

[recycled sixtie]

I recently posted in another thread about a woman with her small dog in Edmonton in the river valley. She was approached by three coyotes and her dog was injured by the coyotes. She jumped on an ice flow in the river and got on her cell phone to get help. Help arrived but the dog was injured.

I believe when critters are hungry they may attack. I think if you show fear an attack is more likely. Conversely I have been in a situation where a dog approached me and it looked like it was going to attack me. There were no rocks around me but I reached down as if to pick up a rock and the dog backed off.

I think pepper spray and a big stick are the minimum you should carry especially in the bush.....G

[1990C4S]

I have them walking past my house all the time. They must be better fed here, they don't even look at us.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

I have them walking past my house all the time. They must be better fed here, they don't even look at us.

You likely don't have any ferral cats or dogs in the area. Coyotes think a cat is a tasty treat.

[Craig T]

You need one of these. I rent him by the week.

The coyotes around here used to be timid and run away at the sight of me. Now they don't even runaway when I let Tank out. This is the second coyote Tank has killed in the last six months????

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Coyotes think a cat is a tasty treat.

That's why I like coyotes. There's no cat crap in my yard.

[Head416]

Wow, surprising to me it kept coming at a big dude. I wonder how it would have reacted if he had charged at it to chase it away.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

That's why I like coyotes. There's no cat crap in my yard.

Just don't let your kids play outside. Yotes would take a kid in a heartbeat.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Just don't let your kids play outside. Yotes would take a kid in a heartbeat.

Frightening prospect that your kids aren't safe outside in their own yard.

[willtel]

There are lots of articles online about how behavior patterns in urban coyotes are morphing as they increasingly come into contact with humans. What was normal years ago isn't necessarily true today.

If a predator like a coyote continues to see humans but isn't harmed by them they will learn and teach their young that humans are not dangerous. Now that they have begun snatching pets off leashes it will become more likely that they view us as hot dog stands.

[stomachmonkey]

They used to be way more common in my hood a couple of years back.

Was here a couple of months and had one chase me into my garage. It was daylight and he looked really mangy so assumed Rabid.

We had a family of them living in the woods on top of a hill behind me. I actually used to enjoy sitting out back at night listening to them yip and howl as they ran around the development.

People with small dogs whose homes that backed up to the golf course greens were less tolerant when they would come out to find their pocket dog decapitated.

We even had instances of them jumping 6 foot fences and snatching pets out of the yard while the owners were standing right there.

We also had a bit of a Bob Cat issue for a while.

For the most part everyone just let's the wildlife be, except the Copperheads, those get dispatched with extreme prejudice.

[5String43]

except the Copperheads, those get dispatched with extreme prejudice.

Oh my, yes!

We've got coyotes here where we live - and yep, if you're walking your pet, they will come after the pet, not necessarily you. They are very bold; small pets disappear all the time. You don't dare leave your animals outside. Hunting in twos and threes and more, they'll swoop through a neighborhood - they have huge ranges - and kill/eat what they find. Next morning, Fluffy doesn't come home. Neighbors complain, city announces coyote control program, the dog people go nuts, because of the pro-dog outcry the city is forced to cancel the program before it even gets off the ground. The one time that didn't happen was about 30 years ago when a couple of them killed a little girl not far from where we live. Interestingly, however, when a mountain lion kills a dog, that gets peoples' attention.

[JavaBrewer]

Just yesterday I was driving out of our neighborhood and 3 coyotes were on the sidewalk walking the same direction. I drove past and they didn't miss a step. Very bold.

[KFC911]

My .45 ACP has been regulated to the spoon safe and instead a .357 lever action is kept "handy". It's more appropriate for ALL predators. Haven't seen the one that was prowling my back fence 'bout a year ago (again). I'll be ready next time. No one can "disallow" what I'm gonna do if I see it again....YMMV. One of my tennants has killed a few, and I've given him permission to harvest the overpopulated deer (with a bow) on the 5 acres of woods that backs up to his house even though it's been surrounded by suburbia for decades. It's a "new" thing for those woods too...I'm intimately familiar with 'em. Now my acerage "out in the country" is a wildlife sanctuary, but neither overpopulated deer or 'yotes belong in fairly dense urban areas even if they are surrounded by pockets of great habitats nearby imo. I live in the middle of what used to be my rural boy scout camp when I was a youngin'....WAY more people, deer and predators here now than 4 decades ago...not a good combination.

[recycled sixtie]

Originally Posted by Craig T

You need one of these. I rent him by the week.

The coyotes around here used to be timid and run away at the sight of me. Now they don't even runaway when I let Tank out. This is the second coyote Tank has killed in the last six months????

What kind of dog is Tank? Probably eats like a horse?
G.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

A very hungry coyote will go for food. They are not a critter that backs down. Few humans are a threat to them since we are not allowed to shoot them like vermin.

In Wisconsin they are considered small game and there is no closed season. They were getting to the point where they were hunting in packs taking livestock. There aren't nearly as many around now as there used to be as they have allowed dogs to be used in the hunt for some time now, which I disagree with. We have fox around and have seen them sleeping in our yard but the 'yotes have stayed away for the most part. We had a large, very territorial (with other animals except the fox) lab that kept them away for a while. Our current lab is smaller (65#) and is afraid of everything. We have also sighted wolves running within a hundred yards of our property. I keep an eye out for any signs of those critters.

[varmint]

Meet the Coywolf: A New Hybrid Carnivore Roams the City
Marisa Wong | January 15, 2014 4:03 PMvideo
PBS Nature presents “Meet the Coywolf,” a documentary about a remarkable new hybrid carnivore that is slipping unnoticed into our cities. A mixture of western coyote and eastern wolf, the coywolf’s appearance is very recent — within the last 90 years — in evolutionary terms.

“Meet the Coywolf” traces the coywolf, also known as the Eastern Coyote, from its origins in Eastern Canada to the parks of New York City. The documentary reveals how quickly adaptation and evolution can occur, especially when humans interfere.

“The arrival of coyotes into New York City is a wonderful, fantastic phenomenon,” Mark Weckel told MetroFocus’ Rafael Pi Roman. Weckel, a postdoctoral researcher at the American Museum of Natural History‘s Center for Biodiversity & Conservation, and Christopher Nagy, Director of Research at the Mianus River Gorge, were featured in the documentary for their efforts to track and study coywolves in the New York metropolitan area. In 2006, Weckel and Nagy created the Gotham Coyote Project in an attempt to better understand and educate the public about urban coyotes.

“I think in conservation you hear about all the sad stories, and coyotes are really kind of a success story,” Nagy added.