What lay on Jennifer McKinney’s front lawn in the early morning hours was more than she could bear. It was her cat, Whiskey, who had been killed overnight
“He was just in a heap,” she recalls. “His neck had been broken, his head had been gnawed, and all of his intestines had been ripped out.”
McKinney lives between Audelia and Plano just north of the police substation. It’s been her home for four years, and throughout that time, her cat always insisted on going out at night.
“He was an experienced outdoor cat. He would have been able to get away from a dog,” she says. “And we’ve got a big dog who will bark when he hears something outside, but he never barked, so we think it was something stealth that snuck up on Whiskey.
“It was pretty horrific, and it was just so unexpected because I really thought Whiskey could take care of himself.”
After talking with a few neighbors, McKinney came to believe a coyote killed her cat. One neighbor, Kevin Caldwell, had seen a coyote at 6:30 one evening while coming home from work.
“I turned north on Audelia from Northwest Highway, and a coyote ran across the street then back into the wooded area behind the police substation,” Caldwell says. “I grew up on a farm, and I’ve seen lots and lots of coyotes. It wasn’t mistaken identity.”
His wife, Karen, says they have lived in their house since 1989, and while they’ve heard mention of coyotes over the years, it has been only during the past few months that the animals began directly affecting the neighborhood.
“When people are finding their pets eaten in the front yard, and we’re living in the city of Dallas and paying taxes, that doesn’t feel right to me,” says Karen Caldwell. “Right now it’s a bit of a crisis.”
She contacted the city’s animal services department to voice her concerns, and that’s how she reached Paul Curington, animal services operations manager, whose job has made him a de facto wildlife expert. Curington says coyotes, which lives in sewers, creek bottoms and wooded areas throughout Dallas, are here for the long haul.
“When a person calls and says, ‘We’ve got coyotes – you’ve gotta get’em out of here,’ that’s not realistic,” Curington says. “What you’re trying to do is keep the coyotes at bay from the human element – keep them from property, alleys, etc. – then they’ll just concentrate in the forest or woods where they belong.”
Basically, he says, we’ve invaded their turf. Lake Highlands is experiencing an influx of new businesses and homes along 635 and Northwest Highway on previously undeveloped land, and any time developers clear space once occupied by wildlife, coyotes’ lives are disrupted. But because they are some of the most adaptable animals on the planet, they learn how to live in urban areas. New York and Los Angeles have coyote problems, too, Curington says, and Los Angeles recently reached enough of a crisis point that it began encouraging residents to shoot them. But killing coyotes doesn’t necessarily fix the problem either, he says, because when coyotes lose a member of their pack (usually four to eight coyotes), they will reproduce to make up for the loss.
It might seem like an unwinnable war, but Curington encourages residents to learn to coexist peacefully with coyotes. They’re great for rodent control, he says, and they’re extremely unlikely to threaten or even encounter humans.
“They’re nocturnal, for one, and they’re just too shy. But they can adapt to humans walking by them,” Curington says. “Those are the ones you need to be careful of because they have developed that hardened shell. They may not charge or attack, but they’ve grown accustomed to that human element.”
That’s what concerns Mary Vann. She lives not far from McKinney, closer to 635, and experienced a similar tragedy – waking up one morning to find her cat “filleted” on her front lawn, as she describes it. The cat had a puncture wound in her neck, and her body was missing from the waist down except for the skin on her back. There was no sign of struggle and no blood, and Vann says her veterinarian told her that it appeared to be a coyote’s work.
“Now I worry if my kids are out at night. My son likes to run, and I don’t think the coyotes would attack, but it is kind of worrisome,” she says. “If it’s happening a lot, then it means these coyotes are getting aggressive. Everybody’s going to take their pet out at some point. I go out to the back yard to watch [my dog] because I worry that something could crawl in.”
Curington encourages residents to call 311 whenever they see a coyote or evidence of one. While the city’s animal services can’t rid Dallas of its coyote population, it can track and monitor to trace patterns. If a number of calls start coming in from a particular area, Curington says, he knows he has a pack on his hands. Animal services will set traps in the area, and if that doesn’t alleviate the problem, the department will bring in a wildlife professional to help.
But the best way to keep coyotes out of the residential portions of our neighborhood, Curington says, is to eliminate their source of food (see sidebar above for tips).
“Dogs and cats need to be confined. Every time I turn around, I hear, ‘They’re killing our cats and our dogs.’ So I ask, ‘Well, how are they getting in your house?’” Curington says. “If there is a food source for these coyotes, they will stay around, and unfortunately, a cat is like a shrimp cocktail to them.”
