Coyotes a problem in . . . Boston???

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They shoot coyotes, don’t they?
Apparently the answer is ‘no’ if you live in Greater Boston, where local and state officials shrug despite howls for action

By Alex Beam
Globe Columnist / January 10, 2012

First thing we do, let’s kill all the coyotes.

Seriously, this lowbrow Man vs. Wild comedy has to stop. For at least a decade, coyotes have been carrying off household pets and threatening people all over Boston, notably in such posh, hair-trigger suburbs as Newton, Belmont, and Brookline. The city of Belmont’s website has a neat, interactive map that allows citizens to post coyote sightings. Let’s just say it looks as if there are a lot more coyotes in Belmont than Dunkin’ Donuts outlets.
They shoot coyotes, don’t they?
Apparently the answer is ‘no’ if you live in Greater Boston, where local and state officials shrug despite howls for action

By Alex Beam
Globe Columnist / January 10, 2012
The coyote tale is always the same. A frantic citizen has a close encounter with one of the state’s 10,000 coyotes. He or she appeals to the police, City Hall, the animal control authorities, the state wildlife gang, and always gets the same answer: Sorry, nothing we can do.

Last month the Globe reported the plight of Brookline’s Ann Tolkoff, one of several residents concerned about a family of four coyotes loping around the Corey Hill neighborhood near Coolidge Corner. Tolkoff and her neighbors want the coyotes evicted, but the solutions offered are either ineffectual or inane. Massachusetts won’t trap the coyotes because the Legislature banned “inhumane’’ body-gripping traps in 1996. So-called box traps exist, but they don’t work very well.

more here:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2012/01/10/first_thing_we_do_lets_kill_all_the_coyotes/

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@Lustig Andrei,

There a problem in the suburbs of Birmingham, AL that's for sure. You can't keep your kitties or your little dogs outside. They will be coyote chow if you do.

I am not scared of coyotes...but thankfully my dogs are too big for them to mess with. But there seem to be more and more sightings.

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@Lustig Andrei,

A few years ago a close friend of mine in West Medford, MA (think in the shadow of Tufts Univ.). He lost his pet cat outside of his door to a husband-wife team of coyotes. He heard a racket at 2 am only to discover, to his horror, two shadowy german shepherd-like figures skulking off- one of which had his dead cat in it's mouth. This is 5 miles from Boston and densely populated.

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@Ragman,

Ragman wrote:

This is 5 miles from Boston and densely populated.

Yes, it is. It's hardly fair to even refer to Medford as "suburban." It's almost an extension of the city.

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Coyotes, like raccoons and a select group of other wild critters, have flourished because of human society. Their competition has been eliminated, and human civlization is one huge buffet for them. Many, many moons ago i was watching a half hour nature show on PBS (don't recall the name--this was 30 or more years ago), and that show was about the wildlife of New York . . . that's New York City. One shot showed a coyote loping off a Fed Ex cargo flight from the West, and heading right into the Idlewild marshes. The voice-over said several hundred coyotes arrive in New York each year, but that they usually head off into New Jersey, where the eatin' is good, and the traffic less hectic.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Yeah. I moved there in 1958 and moved out in 1967, while my friend (met in HS) still lives there. After I moved there (around 1959) they were blasting through the rocks extending Interestate 93 to Salem NH - then extending it into Sullivan SQ, Charlestown and North End of Boston. Prior to that, it was still suburbs and Stoneham was considered rural. I bought corn from farmers at farm stands in Reading, MA.

Lots of train tracks there abandoned as well as utilized (B&M railroad). Allowing easy wildlife access as well as coyotes dens to be unmolested.

Here's the story about wild coyote sighting and problems in West Medford and vicinity (2008).
http://www.macrwm.org/inthepress.htm#Shock,_awe_at_coyotes_in_the_city

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@Setanta,

I well recall treading very gingerly so as not to upset or startle a skunk one night, coming home to my high-rise apartment on the 19th floor of a 25-story apartment building on Huntington Ave. in Boston, just down the street from Harvard Medical School and the Museum of Fine Arts. The critter was rooting around in a patch of greenery in front of the building. Racoons also were not uncommon. Never saw a coyote that deep in the city, however. Saw a red fox running from back-yard into another one morning in the very posh suburb of Chestnut Hill.

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@Lustig Andrei,

There are currently reportedly (see the previous link) are 10 dens of coyotes in Medford. the North End has had coyote sightings. Apparently they shop in the North End for canoles. Dang sweet tooth.

Back in the late 50s with the displacement and habitat disturbance of the woods nearby from construction of I-93 , we used to get racoons regularly that would raid our step-on in-ground garbage pail. One of a team of racoons would jump off the backdoor banister right on the step-on handle of the heavy pail's lid while the others would get the lid to stay ajar. Better never underestimate the dexterity or smarts of racoons. We had to put a brick under the step-on handle of the in-ground garbage pail. removing the brick was child's play for them. Finally that type of garbage men stopped coming. I think racoons wrote a protest letter.

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@Ragman,

Yeah, raccoons are clever as hell. When I was living in the woods in New Hampshire, they made very interesting neighbors.

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@Lustig Andrei,

I do my part for coyotes. I use a 222 hornet with a bull barrel . I have 3 coyote tails in my studio. We had used 1080 (sodium Flouroacetate) , VEEERRRRRY DEADLY. No antidote. Its almost too dangerous to handle.We used to get chep kielbasi and cut a notch in and throw in some 1080. (Amt not critical, its deadly in the PPM level ).
I used to mask up and wear lab gloves until I realized that I was exposing myself to some really nasty ****. SO I exchanged that for high v lead poisoning. Our coyotes have a taste for barnyard fowl, so most fowl would be let free range cause they know how to roost high where a coyote cant get. (They can dig into a wooden chicken coop) The chickens just huddle up waiting to get picked off at night.

We want to get another donkey , they will kick the **** out of coyotes. Its getting fairly serious around here. Its nopt so much that the farms are being raided, its the small AMISH homesteads with 10 acres and a woodshop business. Amish have a virtual smorgasbord of livestock , all kinds of fowl and Barn Cats (coyotes love pussy).

It used to be that DelMarva was essentially coyote free because of the peninsula effect. Not anymore. The animals have been seen all the way down Delmarva

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I saw one the other day whilst sitting in a Tim Horton's, trying to cross one of the busiest intersections in town.
Just recently, while taking a walk through the nearby graveyard I had two of them stalking me. They're smart alright, but those donkeys can make mince meat out of them...

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@Ceili,

You're located where, Caili? Vancouver, was it?

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@Lustig Andrei,

Edmonton, Alberta. Granted this area is far more wild than Boston, but still, I live close to the downtown core. I'm a good couple of miles from the outskirts. I did live in Vancouver for a couple of years. There the scare was bears and cougars...

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I live in Quincy just south of Boston. Quincy is a city and I've seen coyotes running through the back of condo, through the office park near where I live and of all places walking through the parking lot of the South Shore Mall at night.

I've read this article and they have become a huge issue with pets. Fortunately my cat is strictly an indoor cat - I do worry at night with walking the dog. I usually make sure that I make enough noise that it keeps them away. There have been a few incidents where coyotes do follow and a rare case or do where they attack a walked dog.

My boss has two very large dogs and she has seen coyotes skulking around when she had walked them at night - granted she leaves in a more rural type of town, but her dogs are bigger than the coyotes.

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@Setanta,

Not to mention we have lots of wild turkeys and bunnies - great eating for the coyotes.

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@Linkat,

I am not worried about coming up on a coyote walking the dogs. They seem to be pretty skittish. They are so spindly looking. My dogs are bigger then they are it seems.

We have foxes, possums, armadillo's, and raccoons as well. Saw an eight point buck in my front yard one morning. We are in the county - but it is very populated here though it is not considered metropolitan at all.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Toronto has a lot of racoons, skunks, possums . . . one friend claims she's seen a coyote, but i've never seen them, and i can't imagine them surviving well through the winters here.

Toronto is bisected by the Don River. The original settlement (York) was on the lakeside plain, but it has expanded north to the top of the bluffs beyond the lake. These bluffs are from 175 to 200 feet or more above sea level. The Don river drains the area, and many, many small streams and some respectable sized creeks as well. The Don River valley and the gullies in which the streams flow represent wildlife highways. A report i heard on CBC (i can't vouch for this) said the overall racoon population in Ontario has a density of three per square kilometer, but that in Toronto, that rises to 150 per square kilomter.

If coyotes ever get established in southern Ontario, Toronto will be paradise for them.

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@Setanta,

No reason why coyotes couldn't thrive in southern Ontario. They do well in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. Saw a pack of them one winter morning in New Hampshire bring down a half-lame doe trying to escape across a frozen pond. Her hooves kept skidding on the ice and the coyotes soon had her. Made quick work of the carcass, too.

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@Setanta,

Canada has a major coyote deterrant, the porcupine. These suckers can be tantalizingly available toanimals yet they manage to take care of themselves and deliver often fatal infections to the quill recipient.

Course, as I found out once, Porcupines LOVE antifreeze and will chew through yer car water hose to get it.

course it kills em but they go totally gooned and Im stuck with a car that I have to crawl beneath and patch up with anything available. Duck tape is great for such quick repairs

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@Lustig Andrei,

When I worked in Burlington Massachusetts I saw a Coyote in the parking lot of the Oracle complex one night when I was leaving work. It was just loping around the open lot at dusk, acting casual as I followed him in my car.

Burlington is a pretty urban area, especially where I was (just across the highway from the mall).

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Coyotes a problem in . . . Boston???

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