His comments come after an incident in which a large coyote charged at an Irvine father at the front door of his townhome. The man says that the predator was after his 1-year-old son, who was sick and had been crying for hours inside.
An Irvine man says a coyote charged him recently, but stopped short of attacking him.
Reports of coyotes killing pets are commonplace in Irvine, said longtime resident Suzanne Nicklaus, whose cat was eaten last week by two or three of the predators.
Nicklaus pointed to her own loss and to the incident with the man and his son in asking the City Council on Tuesday night to disseminate warnings and information to residents and to control or thin the local coyote population.
Irvine is so safe, she said, that it leads residents to believe they can wander through parks and open spaces into the night with their children.
"That's a great thing, because we are not afraid of human predators, but I think we need to be more aware that the four-legged ones are in our area," she said. "I want to feel safe when I go to the Woodbridge pools at night or when I walk in the morning."
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Thanks to Emile for the heads-up.
Road trip?
ReplyDeleteIf I didn't think folks would get upset at me stalking around L.A. in the middle of the night with loaded guns.....
ReplyDeleteGet some cards printed with the horse head on them with that slogan!
ReplyDeleteThat's life, bitches. Be aware and ready to rock. Anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI see a market for a new, albeit unorthodox, coyote call.
ReplyDeleteIt's the Sick Crying Baby, brings them right to your doorstep. Free machete (with headsplitting instructions) if you order in the next 30minutes!
Just a bit more clarification for the non-hunters.
ReplyDeleteCoyotes eat rabbits. Back in the mid '70's, I shot my first jackrabbit with a .41 magnum pistol. He was on the run and about 70 yards away. I caught him square in the right hip. It spun him around twice, but didn't kill him.
Walking toward him, I noticed that his death cry eerily sounded like a baby crying. I'll tell you the truth, it was creepy. When I got to him, I noticed that one of his eyes had been knocked out of its socket (though still connected by the optic nerve) and he was doing the sideways floor dance that I usually associate with "Jerome Lester Horwitz". (Curly Howard, Three Stooges...get it now?)
A merciful .22 to the sufferer ended his misery. Not wanting good meat to go to waste, I began the task of processing my evening repast. While skinning, I noticed that his corpse was riddled with worms. (I later learned that locals called this "spring fever") It might make good catfish bait, but it ain't going in my skillet.
My point is simple. Coyotes eat rabbits. Wounded rabbits sound like crying babies. I have no desire to eradicate the species, but they're not fuzzy little puppies that need to be fed out of sympathy. Especially when they feed on pets and children.
F 'em. If they tasted like pork, they'd be out of our way by now.