![\"coyote\"](\"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/coyote.jpg\" "\\"coyote\\"")
In neighborhoods where coyotes are prowling, experts suggest people keep their pets indoors, lock up their trash and outdoor pet food and, most of all, don’t feed the wild visitors.<\/p>\nIn neighborhoods where coyotes are prowling, experts suggest people keep their pets indoors, lock up their trash and outdoor pet food and, most of all, don’t feed the wild visitors.<\/p>\n
That advice is prudent for anyone in Florida, but especially to people in places like the small fishing village of Cortez, west of Bradenton in Manatee County, where residents say coyotes, once the icon of the American Southwest, are increasingly showing up in back yards and snatching up family pets.<\/p>\n
Statewide, the range of the coyote continues to expand. Over the past few months, coyotes have been spotted at an airport in Martin County, at a school in Pasco County and along waterways in Gainesville and Venice.<\/p>\n
Cortez residents fingered coyotes as a new predator after they began hearing strange yipping and yowling at night. Eventually, the coyotes revealed themselves, sometimes snatching up puppies right in front of cortez residents’ eyes.<\/p>\n
Now, residents say the cortez coyotes have decimated the local pet population. Those keeping track estimate the number of pets believed eaten by coyotes is nearing 60.<\/p>\n
And there does not appear to be much anyone can do about coyotes. Guns cannot be fired in residential areas. Poisons are banned. The use of traps is limited.<\/p>\n
Residents have been advised to keep pets indoors, lock up trash and outdoor pet food, and not to feed the coyotes, which look like dogs and some people consider cute.<\/p>\n
“We would prefer not to have to kill them, but if push comes to shove, I’ll buy a gun,” said Cortez resident Linda Molto, who is convinced she lost two of her cats, Malcolm and Wahoo, to coyote attacks in the past six months.<\/p>\n
Coyote numbers are not on the rise in Southwest Florida, according to Breanne Strepina, a wildlife biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. But they are more visible this time of year because adult coyotes are pushing their offspring into independence.<\/p>\n
Combine that with a coyote’s need to establish its own territory and the steady spread of urban neighborhoods into rural areas, and suddenly coyotes are being seen in Florida backyards and along canals.<\/p>\n
Firm estimates of Southwest Florida coyote populations are hard to come by. Yet Strepina said her agency gets about 20 calls a month this time of year in the 13 counties she oversees, which stretch from Hernando to Charlotte.<\/p>\n
Nationally, coyotes are being seen in ever more urban areas, from downtown Los Angeles and Chicago, to pop singer Jessica Simpson’s backyard, where a coyote grabbed and ran off with her toy dog as she watched.<\/p>\n
Coyotes, which weigh about 30 to 35 pounds and have the body structure of a medium-sized dog, eat just about anything, including watermelons, Strepina said. But what they really like are mammals under 10 pounds — squirrels, rodents and cats.<\/p>\n
In Cortez, residents are horrified by the loss of their pets. Feral cats that used to hang around the post office or the fish restaurant for scraps have been all but wiped out.<\/p>\n
The community fears the coyotes are getting bolder, and some worry they could attack a small child.<\/p>\n
However, coyote attacks on humans are very rare, and only two fatalities have ever been reported — one a 3-year-old child in California whose parents were feeding local coyotes, the other a 19-year-old Canadian folk singer who was killed by two coyotes in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There does not appear to be much anyone can do about coyotes. Guns cannot be fired in residential areas. Poisons are banned. The use of traps is limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-field-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.floridawildlifetrapper.com\/flnwr_wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}