Go Ask Your Dad

A couple years ago, my daughter Danielle did her desert report on coyotes. We weren’t that surprised to learn that cats are a favorite food of coyotes. In our neighborhood in the Fullerton hills, stories abound about missing cats and dogs who were lost to night time predators. And we’ve had our own encounters with them. Saw a coyote running down the street one morning with a cat in its mouth and the kids lost their beloved rabbit Butterscotch, most likely from a coyote (see photo below). So it was pretty terrifying to read this story in the OC Register that my boss Tracey sent me recently about a pair of coyotes that confronted a jogger in her Rossmoor neighborhood. The woman was not injured but the two coyotes weren’t backing down either. Rossmoor has had an epidemic of coyotes because of road work nearby that is clearing away habitat.

Rossmoor is not unlike many neighborhoods in Orange County where coyotes and other wildlife have less and less places to roam so they roam among us. In fact, here’s a story by Daily Pilot reporter Joseph Serna about some recent attacks in Costa Mesa.

Because we live near a golf course and riding trails, I doubt that we will ever not have coyotes in our Fullerton neighborhood. But coyotes can be dangerous not only to cats and dogs and other small animals, but to humans and especially small children.

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