| Coyotes: real or imagined threat? |
Provincetown Banner StaffCoyotes are fierce predators. And their hunting habits become more intense and frequent while they're feeding a litter of pups. At this time of year, the pups are about five months old, about 25 pounds and the size of a small female, and they're just starting to range on their own for food, which could be why people are seeing more of them. Domestic cats have dual personalities. On the one hand, they're our loving affectionate pets; on the other, they, too, are merciless and unrelenting predators. In fact, it could be said that cats are one of the few animals, other than humans, that will hunt not because they're hungry, but solely for the thrill of the kill. But they are our pets, a member of our family, and therefore our instinct is to protect them. And if coyotes are killing our pets, what's next? Our children? Naturalist Peter Trull, who has studied coyotes on the Cape since 1989 and is director of education at Center for Coastal Studies, said people have more to fear from domestic dogs than from wild coyotes. 'I just took pictures of a three-year-old girl who'd just had 10-15 stitches and a hole in the side of her mouth because she'd gotten bit by someone's pet, either a golden or a yellow lab, a friendly pet,' Trull told the Banner. 'Thousands of people are viciously attacked every year by loving pet dogs, but coyotes don't want anything to do with people.' In fact, the only reported incident of a coyote biting a person on the Cape was in Sandwich a couple of years ago, when a small boy was bitten in his yard. That particular coyote had been injured and was kept in a cage and fed by humans during its rehabilitation. Additionally, it has been reported that someone in that Sandwich neighborhood had been leaving food out for wild animals. If you come upon a coyote, the best approach is to shoo it away. If it doesn't go, Trull recommends throwing a rock at it. 'I've studied coyotes longer than anyone on the Cape, had more personal face-to-face interviews with people who've had pet and livestock issues with coyotes. They don't like people, they avoid people,' Trull said. According to Trull, who's nearing completion on a book tentatively titled 'Coyotes in Your Neighborhood' ('an educational tool for people to have a better understanding of who these animals are'), coyotes will appear in downtown streets and in residential areas because 'they are basically path-following open-space animals. They like mice and mice live in open fields, in yards, in meadows. They like small mammals, rabbits eat grass, woodchucks eat gardens.' Bob Prescott, executive director of Mass. Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, has trouble, too, mustering up much sympathy for the problem of the missing cats. 'I have no sympathy - it may sound a little harsh - for a cat or a dog being eaten by a coyote. That is 100 percent completely avoidable in this day and age,' he told the Banner. 'It may not have been 10 years ago when they first moved out here, but anybody that lives on the Cape now and has lived here for the past five years, if they haven't read the papers or been to one of the workshops or seen it on cable TV. ... I mean, cats should not be outdoors ... [and] cats kill more wildlife than coyotes do, and ... they're getting fed.' Trull agrees. 'People don't understand that their cats are predators, that their cats are part of the food web, that their cats are going to get eaten, hit by cars. You let your cat out to run freely all day long out in the woods, out in the fields, out in the grasslands, and they kill stuff, and animals are going to kill them. You don't have to be a biologist to know that,' he said, adding, 'The domestic cat is the number one predator in Massachusetts. There is nothing that comes close as a predator in Massachusetts that kills the number of wild animals as the domestic cat - mink, bobcat, coyote, hawk, owl, nothing comes close. And what makes them exempt? Nothing.' Nature - limited territory and competition for food - will regulate the number of coyotes, say the scientists. In fact, said Trull, he recently found two dead juveniles on the road in Brewster, killed by humans in cars. And, the state allows a three-month coyote hunting season, from Nov. 1 to Feb. 1. Approximately 80 coyotes are killed each year during hunting season. According to Trull, part of the problem is, 'We live in a society where hysteria rules, you know, Jerry Springer. Everything has to be extreme in America. The more extreme things are, the more people get off on it, so they are trying to do a big extreme thing about coyotes attacking people. Well guess what? They don't. ... They don't bite people, dogs bite people. ... Cats are not exempt, there's nothing in the world that says a cat shouldn't get eaten by a coyote, because a cat kills everything, they're part of the food web, so keep them in the house.' Coyote sightings launch education campaign By JOHN LEANING STAFF WRITER HARWICH - Debbie Kane watched from her window last August as a coyote came into the back yard, grabbed her cat, and began walking away. "I definitely saw a coyote. I started running after it. He took the cat," she said.