Of course, not all of them have bad enough judgment to eat at Quizno’s. Chicago Sun-Times photo
Via Tee Poole, a coyote petition:
You’ve seen the headlines: Coyotes are attacking humans with more and more frequency. One wandered into a Chicago sandwich shop. Another lives in Central Park in New York. Five people have reported coyote attacks in the Denver area since December. And Colorado officials have responded by killing eight coyotes!
But the real problem isn’t coyotes attacking humans, it’s human suburban sprawl that increasingly takes over the habitat of wild animals like coyotes. Rather than hunting down and killing animals whose habitat has been destroyed by human subdivisions, we should enact stronger urban planning laws that protect the habitat of our nation’s wildlife.
Urge your governor to work with your state’s legislature and local county commissioners to ensure that humans don’t further encroach on wild lands! Only then will we see a decline in the amount of these “urban coyote attacks.”
I agree Quizno’s is bad. That Coyote should get out of there and go find an Arby’s.
That’s a pretty healthy looking coyote for living in as bad an environment as a city!
I don’t know. Some people they’ve been living in Toronto since the 1930s; others say they’re only in the west end and moving east. We have deep river valleys where they can shelter, which have deer and foxes as well. I don’t know if they are “fully urbanized” (living under porches instead of in valleys) but one was seen lounging in High Park, our largest park, during daylight a couple of years ago.
However, just recently a coyote popped into someone’s backyard during the day and grabbed a pet dog, at the Beaches, which has been developed since the late 1800s or early 1900s. I think that would be fairly disconcerting, especially if small children also frequented the yard. One can argue that coyotes are moving in because the exurbs are being developed. But I suspect that population pressure will always force a few into the city, even if they are not urbanized. We no longer have wolves to keep them away.
My cats go in and out of the house through their own cat-hatch, and have a fenced yard, but it’s not coyote-proof and they don’t stay in it. I do worry about them.
One thing I’ve been noticing that in the last few years, since Toronto started composting its food wastes in animal-proof bins, the number of raccoons and sparrows has fallen dramatically. Raccoons have always been at their population limit here, with a batch of young trying to find new homes at least twice a year. Most of them starve or are killed by cars. The only difference is, now it takes far more households to support a raccoon.
I’dd rather pick my battles a little more wisely.
Adding more information about the nature of what you think is a wisely chosen battle, and why this doesn’t qualify, would elevate your comment from the realm of mere nitpicky snark to actual potentially useful criticism.