Hero dad strangles coyote after it attacks his toddler

NY Post ^ | 20 Jan 2020 | Tamar Lapin

[DUMBGRUNT]

Ian O’Reilly was walking with his wife and three kids on a trail near Judes Pond in Kensington around 11 a.m. when the wild animal jumped out of the woods and grabbed the 2-year-old child by the jacket, cops said.

That’s when “the dad went into protection mode,” kicking the coyote before choking it, said Kensington Police Chief Scott Cain.

The dad was bitten in the arm and chest and is being treated for rabies as a precaution. The animal didn’t break the toddler’s skin thanks to his heavy-duty snowsuit.

[woodbutcher1963]

Why?

Haven’t you heard of the Werewolves of London?

Warren Zevon wrote a song about them:

Werewolves Of London
Warren Zevon

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook’s
Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein

Aaoooooo
Werewolves of London
Aaoooooo

Aaoooooo
Werewolves of London
Aaoooooo

You hear him howling around your kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again

Aaoooooo
Werewolves of London
Aaoooooo

Aaoooooo
Werewolves of London
Aaoooooo

He’s the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim
I’d like to meet his tailor

Aaoooooo
Werewolves of London
Aaoooooo

[major_gaff]

Here in PA we just shoot them...nasty beasties.

[43north]

It takes 2-3 days to get the test results. You don’t fool around with rabies. Treat right away because you can always stop if the test is negative.

[Paal Gulli]

Genetic testing of more than 500 eastern coyotes showed that all of them are a hybrid animal, 10-11% domestic dog, 24-27% wolf (roughly equal portions [western] grey wolf and [eastern] timberwolf), the remainder being (western) coyote.

Coyotes were all but eradicated from the eastern states in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. In the 20th Century they returned to the east, primarily in two periods of migration, each passing through the Great Lakes basin. The Great Lakes watershed, which is a natural bottleneck for east-west or west-east migrations of terrestrial mammals, hosts more "natural" species hybridization than anywhere else on earth. Biologists believe it was while migrating across that region that the western coyote's bloodline became intermingled with domestic canines and both species of wolf.

So the eastern coyote is literally a whole different animal, physically and behaviorally. Also different to hunt or defend against.

[Midwesterner53]

Toxic masculinity? Likely academia would have been pulling for the coyote. This guy is exactly what Dad’s are for, providing and protecting.

[heavy metal]

can hear the yelps and howls early every morning around my place...
about four months ago heard the screeching of some critter after the constant yelping, found what was left of a deer that had a leg stuck in a portion of field fence about a quarter mile from my place...

[EEGator]

And Philly.

[woodbutcher1963]

We try to shoot them here in NH.
The trouble is they are very rarely seen out in the daytime.
They are very wary and smart. You pick them up on your trail camera at night.

They have become very good at living in the suburbs around here. They prey on small game including lots of domestic cats.

Between Fischer Cats and Coyote packs you really do not want to let your cats outside around here. Unless you do not like your cat.

This coyote was most likely sick. Probably rabies.

[Daffynition]

Trail cam here has many of them parading on the edge of our property, in the NEK.

Coyote got a favorite turkey of mine recently; The coyote are hard to get.

We can’t trap b/c we have 3 Labs running around. I hate those coyotes.

We haven’t had the deer herds this year; my son blames the coyotes. I think he’s right.

[IYAS9YAS]

In the meantime, and in unrelated news, local pet owners keep posting messages about their sweet pet dogs and cats that seem to have mysteriously disappeared.

I live in the Albuquerque metro area (Rio Rancho). Coyotes everywhere. Raptors too. Signs all over the place for missing cats and dogs.

We had a Great Horned Owl around for a couple of weeks. Came around at dusk. Sucker was huge. Our local wild rabbit population has dwindled from several to a couple in that time. The owl has since moved on, but the coyotes remain.

[samtheman]

Great paternal instinct!

[mad_as_he$$]

Amazing dad!

FWIW Dislocation(violently)of the front leg of a canine at the shoulder tears the artery and they bleed out rapidly. If you can manage to dislocate both it is even faster(obviously).

[FLT-bird]

Screw with a man’s child right in front of him, and you’d better prepare for a fight to the death.

[woodbutcher1963]

At my old house we had a 3 mile x 3 mile patch of woods, swamps and old logging roads behind the house. We had many more coyotes there than at the new old house a few miles to the west.

We lost 3 cats at that property. All three disappeared in about a two year period. I still remember the warm August night when one got it. I was sleeping in bed with the windows open. I heard the cat scream. Next morning no more Biffy.

Our beagles we keep in a fenced in 6’ high chain link yard.
There are always 4-6 out there together. They keep the deer away from the house. However, the wild turkeys seem to know that they can not get out of that fenced yard. They taunt the hounds.

Bobcats have also made a comeback around here. There have been several postings of these cat pictures on the local Facebook town pages. There seems to be one living about 2 miles north of my house. A person there has posted several pictures of it in their back yard on the local FB page.
Several other folks have caught them on their trail cams and even ring door bell.

Someone posted a video last week of a bull moose walking across their front yard during the middle of the day when they were at work. Their Ring doorbell cam caught the motion.

Lastly, there was another siting about a week ago in Amherst, NH of a mountain lion. The man swears it was a 100+ pound cat with a 3’ long tail. It crossed in front of him when he was driving home from work. The area is very sparsely settled. This could be the same cat that came through last summer and killed a dog in Merrimack. So far, know one has been able to get a picture of the big cat.

If only these cats would stop and pose in front of a dated local newspaper so Fish and Game would admit they are here.

[BipolarBob]

Anytime sirens wail the coyotes sound like there’s a million of them but this was the first time in a long time I saw one in broad daylight so brazen.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

“It takes 2-3 days to get the test results. You don’t fool around with rabies. Treat right away because you can always stop if the test is negative.”

Makes sense. Thanks.

[major_gaff]

That used to be the case here too, but they have gotten bolder. The game
commission has added coyotes to the varmint list so they are fair game. I
usually see them while out deer hunting and shoot them on site...12G sabot
slug gun make a real mess of them.

We have fischers here now too...the State re-introduced them and you can
trap them now. That being said, fischers keep to the deep woods and avoid
people Creepy to hear them scream in the woods at night.

That coyote was definitely sick if it went after a kid with the parents there.
That is why I always carry out in the woods.

[Daffynition]

We lost 2 cats to coyote; finding the cat carcasses is a gruesome experience, especially when the feline is part of the family.

Bobcats, red and gray fox, turkey, black bear,deer, moose on the trail cam....parading through.

Our area [NEK]is pretty remote and wild, and I pray there are no catamount in the neighborhood. That's all I need. Bear have been thinned out. Coyote made the large herds of deer we used to have, break into smaller herds .

Pair of cubbies, who could barely keep up with mom.

Friends, who were building their own home on Avon Mtn, [CT]told the DEEP they saw a mountain lion; DEEP refused to recognize that; so the couple took a picture

Darn cat had a radio color on it.

In Vermont, there was no moose lottery this year....and probably won't be for some time. When we lived in North Conway; a bull made a mess of the corner post of the farmer's porch by rubbing his antlers on it.

[woodbutcher1963]

Was that Mountain Lion in CT the one that got killed by the car on the Merritt Parkway in Greenwich?

[woodbutcher1963]

There are Fishers living around the suburban areas here in southern NH. They have become experts at killing house cats.
They sit up in a tree and wait until the cat walks underneath.

Keep in mind our “suburban” areas are not houses on 1/4 acre lots. Outside of the city of Nashua, NH most of the towns have minimums of 200’ or more of road frontage and 1-3 acres minimum to build a single family house. This results in a fair amount of woods and property in between structures. Therefore, lots of space for critters to roam.
NH is the most forested state in the country.

Then you have the stupid people that feed wild animals in their backyard. Sometimes it is unintentional. Our former house in Amherst where we only had 2 1/2 acres seemed to have more deer than the house we live in now with 12 acres.
We used to have 8-10 deer come eat the sunflower seeds that fell out of the bird feeder 15’ from the house.
When the snow pack was over a foot deep the deer would come right up to the house at night and eat the shrubs.

There is a house on the road behind me that puts out seed to feed the birds on a couple big trays. I am sure there are smaller song birds that come to feed. However, it is known in the area as the “turkey farm”. In the winter all the turkeys in the area seem to congregate at this former farm. I have counted over 50+ birds when walking by on the road at times. In the spring/summer/fall they tend to disperse into smaller flocks.

For most of this past year we had two Toms and a two Jakes(turkeys)that lived on our property. We saw them everyday. They would hang out in the field on the side of our house during the day. Every night they would take off and roost in the same two White Pine trees on the front of our property. We never fed them. Although they did eat some of my blueberries for the bushes.
I used to see how close I could get to them before they would move. 20’ on foot and 15’ on the John Deere tractor.