Trapper seeks pet-snatching coyote

COEUR d’ALENE — A private trapper was hired to catch a coyote that has killed two dogs and attempted to drag off another dog in a Hayden neighborhood.

Residents of Leisure Park had a meeting to notify pet owners of the coyote’s presence and its intentions. The incidents have been posted on social media, but the animal remains at large.

“A cat has also been reported missing,” said Diane Eborall, who lost her Yorkie and shih tzu to the wild canid.

Wildlife biologist Kara Campbell of Idaho Fish and Game said coyotes are not rare in the urban interface and it is not uncommon for coyotes to make a living in cities.

“They have been around,” Campbell said. “People just don’t know they are there.”

The Leisure Park incidents began in July when the Yorkie was nabbed by a local coyote that Eborall thinks lives in the wooded vacant areas between Honeysuckle and Prairie avenues not far from Walmart.

She stayed up one morning after another dog in Leisure Park, a Pomeranian, was saved from the jaws of a coyote.

She watched out her bedroom window and not long after 5 a.m. the coyote slipped through her yard, she said.

Campbell isn’t sure why the coyote has been keying in on Leisure Park.

“They are generally scavengers, and predators of small prey,” she said. “They may shift to what’s available out there.”

She was called to inspect the remains of a pet, she said, because Leisure Park residents initially feared a mountain lion had moved in. There was no sign associated with a mountain lion, Campbell said.

She referred the residents to local trappers who had the expertise to catch the coyote, but Eborall said so far, the animal is still at large and hasn’t been seen for five days.

Campbell said even if a trapper removes the coyote, it doesn’t ensure another coyote will not take its place.

“That’s not to say something else couldn’t come in and take over,” she said.