I’m licensed to carry concealed firearms, and it is a given that I always go armed if it is legal for me to do so. There certainly is no question that I am packing when I take my dogs on their evening walk every night.
Last year the pack and I came across a coyote that was gorging on trash, a fairly sizable wild predator in the heart of a modern city that was miles from any wilderness area. Although I was certainly ready to put it down if it was rabid and attacked, I let it go without hindrance when it turned tail and ran. Besides the fact that I’m not about to fire a gun unless I need to protect myself, coyotes aren’t enough of a threat to merit hunting them down in the city.
Click on that last link and see how coyotes in southern California have attacked small children in three separate incidents in a five day period. It was only because of the timely intervention of adults that none of the children were killed. Killed and eaten.
And it isn’t as if the children in question were mere babies, either. It seems that the coyotes are trying to snatch toddlers from playgrounds and front yards. Think of a 2-year-old with their face in the sharp grip of a coyote’s jaws.
This news article discusses how the experts are puzzled by how predation on humans on SoCal is on the rise, even though it mentions how one of the coyotes which attacked a little girl was limping as it approached the child. Seems to me that you don’t need to be an expert to realize that humans are easy meals for animals unless they are properly equipped to resist something with natural weaponry.
Added to that is the hippy-drippy “Nature is our cuddly friend!” attitude that dominates in that area of the country. If you have people who actually delight in having wild predators live in close proximity to human children, then there is going to be tragedy some time down the road. Where is the big mystery?
There is no real chance that a predator will be able to prevail over me, or that one will harm a child in my care. But that is because no one in their right mind would ever be able to describe me as a hippy.
My esteemed colleague Dan From Madison wrote a well received series of posts concerning how cougars are losing their fear of humans. It is no surprise that the big cats generate more concern because they are certainly more dangerous, and they have easily killed adult humans. I think that, unless attitudes change, there is going to be an incident where a child is killed by a coyote some time in the not-so-distant future.
And then the hunt will be on, hippies be damned.
