Coyotes in portland, oregon

[“Coyotes spotted roaming a Lewisville neighborhood.”]

By Jerry PDX
sunday, july 2, 2023 at 11:18:00  p.m. edt

See coyotes all the time in pdx, we have “wildlife corridors” they use to travel throughout the city. Far as I know, there’s never been an actual attack on a human, though there have been reports of coyotes getting aggressive toward children or small women. They do attack pets, so people need to keep an eye on their pets around here, but if people secure their garbage and watch their pets, coyotes mostly eat prolific breeders like rats, mice, rabbits and invasives like nutria, which is good for the city. They also kill feral cats, which is good for songbirds, because coyotes don’t climb trees and get into birds’ nests like cats do.

Urban coyotes get a bad rap but are actually more beneficial than not. We just have to reinforce the fear of humans in them.

We had a pack of coyotes hanging around and stalking a neighbor’s pets in my first house, because it was close to a wild area they liked to hang out in. They had gotten really brazen, and were showing little fear of humans, so I got my old pump BB gun and gave it a couple of pumps, then popped one of them in the hindquarters. He yipped and then took off, running, but the others milled around confused, so I popped another one, he took off, too, and the others went with him. We never saw them again.

A low-power BB gun shouldn’t penetrate coyotes’ hide because it won’t penetrate a human one. I know, because when I was a kid we used to shoot at each other with those BB guns. We just didn’t pump it more than once or twice...well, unless you were feeling extra mean. Stupid 70’s kid stuff. Didn’t have nerf guns back then; lucky we didn’t put out an eye.