Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 | 8:44 a.m.
Any neighborhood is a rough one for a coyote.
The neighborhood near Henderson's Sunridge Park proved particularly lethal to one of the dog-like animals last week, when the coyote's ongoing aggressive behavior forced a federal wildlife biologist to shoot it.
Darren Williams, wildlife biologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services said he went to the park near Green Valley Parkway and Sandy Ridge Avenue at the request of a resident who walks two small dogs there each morning.
"Every time he did that, he was approached by the coyote. And it kept getting closer and closer," Williams said.
The day the animal chased the resident's car from the parking lot was the last straw.
"A coyote will eat anything -- garbage, fruit and vegetables, candy, doughnuts. And they love house cats and small dogs," Williams said. "This coyote had keyed in on these small dogs."
His tips for scaring off the animal didn't work. So Williams showed up early one morning and destroyed it. It's certainly not his favorite part of the job, but sometimes it's the only solution.
"(Coyotes) are disease vectors and a reservoir species for several diseases," Williams said.
Nasty ones -- rabies and bubonic plague.
The Sunridge coyote was seen most often on Tuesdays and Fridays -- garbage days for the surrounding neighborhoods. Several residents in the area simply leave their bagged trash on the curb without enclosing it in trash cans, Williams said. And trash is attractive to wild animals.
Keeping it covered would seem like common sense. But Williams said people living on concrete cul-de-sacs don't usually realize that they live in close proximity to wild animals.
But subdivisions don't encroach on animal habitat as much as they create more of it, the biologist said. Even low-water, desert landscaping offers better food, cover and water than the actual desert.
"We're creating ideal habitat for coyotes to survive in our golf courses and gated communities," Williams said. "They see what they get there, and they set up shop. We're artificially stimulating the environment for them."
Rabbits to raptors, we invite them all.
"There's a mating pair of red-tailed hawks in Henderson that are very territorial. One is actually dive-bombing people as they walk by," Williams said.
Troublesome water fowl or raptors are captured and relocated because they are managed and protected. But coyotes are plentiful and relocation rarely is successful anyway. Their range is very wide, and established coyotes fight a newcomer to the death.
Residents who live six or seven blocks from even an acre of open land should expect wild animal visits, Williams said.
A coyote can clear a 6-foot wall from a standing position, or can burrow 18 inches deep to get under a wall if it wants what's on the other side, he added. So leaving dogs and cats or their food in a walled yard never is a good idea, especially at night. Bird feeders attract them too.
"You don't think about the potential of a problem until you encounter one," Williams said.
And by then it might be too late for an animal we unwittingly invited in the first place.
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