I think with coyotes it may work the opposite, they cover a lot of ground and will be sighted in many places over the course of just one evening. They are not shy about being seen.
Probably true. But if one coyote has a range of, say, 5-6 square miles s/he still needs to eat a pound or two of something (or somebody) every single day. If most of that range is suburbia, most of what s/he’s eating will be either pets or wild animals compatible with suburbia. Which is to say small and non-fierce. There may be a lot of sightings per month. But there will also be a lot of predation.
Like with so many other lurking menaces, the “good guys” need to be lucky every single day. The “bad guys” only need to be lucky once to ruin your streak.
IANA pet person. It seems to me coyotes are just one more hazard among many. Toyotas kill quite a few dogs & cats too.
If somebody allows their animal to run free or play unsupervised they are letting the animal “decide” for itself how much of each type of risk to run. Animals, especially indoor pet animals, are not known for their skilled risk/reward analysis. So the owner better be OK with saying to themselves “Well, at least Fido/Fluffy/Whatever died doing what he/she loved.”
And frankly I have to wonder whether an animal caged or leashed or hand-carried everywhere “for it’s own protection” wouldn’t in fact be happier with more freedom on its own terms for statistically fewer years. It’s hard to know. What makes *us *feel good about their care is not necessarily what makes *them *feel good about their care.
Something else I have noticed, right before the coyote invasion about a year ago we were starting to get over run with raccoons. I seldom see any raccoons this past year. I used to see a dozen or so each night if I were out walking. I expect when the raccoons are thinned out enough they will move to another neighborhood. It usually takes 2 coyotes for a semi grown raccoon. They won’t fool with a big adult.
Toyotas, and other vehicles, kill many many many more pets than coyotes.
My job as a responsible pet owner is not only to protect my pet and it is certainly not to do whatever makes it happiest for the moment. My job goes beyond that. Sure in this thread we are talking about pets as potential prey, but let me share a recent local story. A women walking her little fur ball and out from the bushes comes an animal that severely mauls her animal before she could even respond. The dog survived the immediate attack but died at the vet’s. The attacker? A previously always sweet lab that had escaped from its fenced-in yard while let be there unsupervised. Owners had called in that their dog was missing earlier in the day.
As an aside - from what I can read yappy smaller dogs are usually not seen as a preferred food source - they are instead seen as competition and as giving a dominance challenge.
Agree that responsible pet owners protect their animals from all threats.
I said it pretty back-handedly but what I meant by the Toyota comment was that people are prone to overreacting to novel threats while ignoring commonplace threats. The OP and thread is concerned with coyotes. But what about the statistically far more dangerous Toyotas? Any realistic threat analysis should include them too. In the correct proportion.
I live in Coyote Central. I see them infrequently, but once the sun goes down, I hear absolute choruses of them, all over, surrounding the plot of land I have. North, South, East and West, there are hundreds of them. They all call to each other, over and over.
I go out and fire a few shotgun blasts and they quite down. For a while.
But I’m not in Torrance. I’m out it BFE. Your Torrance Coyotes might subscribe to a different Newsletter.
Presumably there are no Toyotas roaming around the OPs fenced yard.
Our local off-leash park has a lot of signs warning about coyotes, particularly the “lure” - trying to get a dog to follow them into the woods to play where the pack waits.
We have coyotes and a Great Horned Owl in the area. My little dog goes out into the fenced yard, but I wouldn’t let him roam.
And presumably no dogs ever gets out of fenced in yards when left unsupervised, especially one with “one side of the yard having a short and jumpable portion” …
Who knew this would come up?
My wife hit a Coyote with her 2004 Honda Pilot at highway speed some years back on Rt 80.
Damn Thing Bounced Off. (…and was alive enough to run away.)
When I am in the desert suburbs I hear them calling like crazy, I have yet to hear them howl here in Torrance. That’s why I think they are mostly solitary animals spreading out over a very large area.