coyotes

Westchester Manages to Fight Off Rampaging Coyote

Residents of the upscale Westchester enclave Rye Brook are used to attacks from canines. A golden retriever getting its feces-covered paws all over you as it leaps up in greeting? Happens all the time. A Shih Tzu ravaging your shoelaces until they are almost un-tieable? Practically a daily occurrence. So it’s no wonder that when a seemingly rabid coyote went on a rampage through the town yesterday, the community knew what to do. “It came after me — attacked me and lunged at me,” 14-year-old Eric Mandel told the Daily News. “I smacked it out of the way before it had a chance to bite me. I did it twice. Then I smacked a third time and scared him off and chased it away from the other kids.”

The coyote then targeted Jared Zuckerman and his 2-year-old daughter. “We were sitting outside playing,” Zuckerman also told the News. “I sensed something out of the corner of my eye, but by that time it was grabbing her.” He acted quickly. “I grabbed [my daughter] and turned around and [the coyote] grabbed my tush.” It grabbed his tush! A coyote! That’s worse than the time Mrs. Billingson’s Great Dane pooped in the driveway and she didn’t clean up after it, and for like two days it looked like the Wicked Witch of the West had melted right there under the basketball hoop.

But seriously. Animal-control agents eventually killed the coyote so it couldn’t harm anyone else and are having the body tested for rabies. The residents of Rye Brook, New York, can rest safe that they are no longer in danger — and that if a coyote dares to show its face in town again, they’ll know what to do.

Coyote in suburb attacks caught and killed [NYDN]

Westchester Manages to Fight Off Rampaging Coyote