Coyotes, once exterminated in San Francisco, have been back for about twenty-five years now, forming packs and territories and creating really cool sound effects for people in lockdown during Covid. There are about 200 now.
Several dogs being walked have been taken, with small white dogs being the apparent preference. A five year old child playing in a group at the park got attacked recently and needed stitches. That aggressive coyote is no more and they would test its brain for rabies–if the current administration hadn’t laid off the Federal civil servant who does that. It’s in a freezer, waiting for sanity to return.
One young male feeling the population pressure swam to Alcatraz.
The San Francisco packs’ DNA all tracked with animals from north of the city–they did not come up the open space preserves on the peninsula. The assumption then was that they came trotting across the Golden Gate bridge, but there were so few in Marin County that there would have been no reason for them to take that risk weaving among all those cars.
But here’s where it takes a turn: two different sources told this coyote enthusiast that the leg-trap ban that passed in a state proposition so angered one guy they knew that he blamed the liberals in the City by the Bay and sought revenge.
By using a different trap, a loophole in the law, set to hurt (badly) but not kill.
And then, having separated them from their packs and territories, he drove those injured coyotes across the Golden Gate Bridge and set them free in the Presidio. Repeatedly.
I don’t think he was expecting them to become celebrated, but mostly they have been.
Although I imagine the parents of that little kid would like a word.