Handouts For Hunters

"The only good coyote is a dead coyote," Bruce-Grey Owen Sound MP Larry Miller told about 150 people during sheep day at the 45th annual Grey Bruce Farmers Week.

[...]

Bill Murdoch, the longtime area MPP, was passing around a new petition he'll take to Queen's Park demanding a province-wide $200 bounty on dead coyotes. It is legal to hunt coyotes year round with a license, but they're hard to find and not worth the effort without an incentive, Murdoch and others said at the meeting.

If they were that big a problem, surely they would be "worth the effort" without an incentive. Next, Murdoch will be demanding Ontarians subsidize the local tractor pull. Get off the gravy train, Bill.

Coyotes On The Town

The coyote to the right was caught on video running loose in the middle of Chicago at 3:00 am on Monday morning. The police didn’t seem to know what it was doing there, but Brad Block, a supervisor for the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control told Chicago Breaking News that the coyote is let loose in the city to monitor the rodent population:

The animal has the run of the Loop to help deal with rats and mice. He said no one has called today to complain. “He’s not a threat…. He’s not going to pick up your children,” Block said. “His job is to deal with all of the nuisance problems, like mice, rats and rabbits.”

For the record, I have seen exactly one coyote within the City of T.O. (as well as a bunch running around small-town Arizona). It was trotting along some rail-tracks that run under Don Mills road, at about mid-day, as bold as you please. I've been told, though, that you can hear them howling at night near the Leslie Street Spit.

The picture at left demonstrates that they are at least as cute as any chihuahua of yours that they might eat. In any case, get used to them; they are almost impossible to eradicate in an urban setting.

PS. Note that in the clip our coyote is referred to as "the newest city employee". I hear Rob Ford is looking for cheap labour; this fellow works for rats.

Toronto Coyotes

I've actually seen one, about six or seven years ago, like a scrawny gray dog travelling parallel to the rail-tracks that cross Don Mills South of Ellesmere. All I've read indicates they are pretty much impossible to exterminate when you've got 'em. They're like roaches; if you've see one, that means there's more around (as today's TO Star story points out). They lair around warehouses and industrial buildings where there isn't a lot of human traffic, and come out to eat from dumpsters and other sources of human garbage. Sarnia has been having problems recently, and the West End has had coyote issues for over a decade now, with the occasional tabby becoming lunch.

This piece suggests that urban coyote populations may be underestimated by a factor of 10.