Coyotes infiltrate Indiana suburbs

MUNCIE -- Nurse Jennifer Price took her four yellow Labrador retriever puppies into the back yard last month. It was about 5 a.m. in Price's suburban, northwest neighborhood.\nThree of the dogs finished their business and began pawing the door. As soon as she went to let those three indoors, Price heard the fourth dog, named Bear, scream.\nPrice ran to see if he had rolled down the bank of the ditch behind the house. \n"A coyote had him in its mouth," Price said. "It's one of the worst things I've ever experienced."\nPrice and her boyfriend searched the small woods on the other side of the ditch because they could still hear the puppy screaming. But the screaming stopped, and they didn't find anything.\n"I just kept thinking the coyote was taking him to its den to rip him apart," Price said.\nPrice's boyfriend made phone calls for help and tried to find the puppy's body after she went to work. Around noon, seven hours after the dog was snatched, Price's boyfriend let the dog's mother outside. When he let the dog off the leash, she located the puppy under some brush, about 30 yards or so from home.\nThough his ear was torn, his eye was swollen shut, he was covered in blood and it looked like he had been stabbed multiple times with a pencil, the puppy recovered and was re-named Wiley by his new owners.\nThe attack happened on a Thursday. The following Saturday and Sunday, the coyote returned in the middle of the night when the puppies were let out. "It was the awfulest thing ever," Price said. "It was like something out of a horror movie."\nSuch conflicts are common in Indiana, according to the state's Wildlife Conflicts Information Hotline, operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. On average over the past five years, the hotline has provided technical assistance on coyotes to 167 callers per year.\nLast fall, bookstore employee Bonnie Hill sent a warning letter to her neighbors in a subdivision north of Muncie after she spotted coyotes in her back yard.\n"I was told by DNR to menace them, so I went to Wal-Mart or Meijer's and bought a little air horn," Hill said. "I keep it handy near the back patio. When I blew it, the coyote kind of stood there and looked at me. Then he took off."\nMuncie trapper Bill Hartley said the coyote that attacked Price's puppy "may not have been all that hungry and may have intended to bury it and eat it later."\nWhen he reads missing-dog advertisements in the newspaper, Hartley thinks coyotes are often responsible.\nBruce Plowman, a state biologist, said the coyote viewed Price's puppies as a food source and realized there might be multiple opportunities, so it returned.\n"They certainly are aware of where the food supplies are," Plowman said. "If it catches something somewhere, it will come back to look for more."\nPlowman agreed with Price that more than likely the coyote dropped the puppy for some reason and left. Coyotes primarily eat mice, Plowman said, but they also will eat road kill, lambs, calves, birds, cats, dogs, bird feed, pet food, garbage and other things.\nAs is the case with burglars, the more difficult you make it for coyotes to enter your property, the less likely they are to do so, Plowman said.\n"Apply multiple techniques, like fencing, not having a bird feeder and not leaving pet food out," he said.