{"id":24012,"date":"2019-06-20T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24012"},"modified":"2019-06-28T11:30:02","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T15:30:02","slug":"residents-warn-of-heavy-coyote-presence-in-east-aurora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/residents-warn-of-heavy-coyote-presence-in-east-aurora\/","title":{"rendered":"Residents warn of heavy coyote presence in east Aurora"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents in Aurora\u2019s northeast quadrant\nare urging caution following an increase in coyote sightings in new\ndevelopments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month, Jamie Kidder had\njust finished cleaning his garage around 10.30 a.m. when he sat down in a lawn\nchair to relax with a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after he had a sip or two, he\nsays he saw a coyote walk up the street, across his heighbour\u2019s driveway the\ntwo had \u201ca little eye-to-eye\u201d contact about three feet from his garage door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Kidder, a resident in Aurora\u2019s 2C\ndevelopment just north of the Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex at Leslie and\nWellington, trains dogs and says he has an understanding of canine behaviour,\nand with the wild dog staring back at him, Mr. Kidder could tell he was hungry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had some non-verbal communication\nand he decided that me being the big animal in my cave, it wasn\u2019t a good idea\nto try and get food, but down the street a guy was walking a small dog and [the\ncoyote] toddled down the road to get him. I intervened and the owner got his\ndog up from the ground and I basically walked the coyote out of the\nneighbourhood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immediately after the encounter, Mr.\nKidder called the Town to report his sighting — but it was far from the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was nothing later that day, a\nTuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor was there anything on Wednesday and\nThursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That all changed, however, on the\nFriday. It was garbage day in the neighbourhood. When he was heading out\nearlier that morning, he didn\u2019t see much damage to the garbage left out by\nneighbours the night before, but when he came back around 11 a.m., he found a\nhungry female coyote shredding a garbage bag on the side of the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat same day, I talked to a guy who\nhas a small dog who said the night before he had to beat the coyote off his dog\nwith a hockey stick,\u201d says Mr. Kidder. \u201cI then talked to the neighbours because\nthey have small children and dogs, letting them know to be aware. But the\nbiggest issue came last Saturday when my girlfriend and I were getting ready to\nhead downtown. It was 3 p.m. and she saw a coyote running near the end of the\nstreet. Of course, she went straight into the house. There was a party of six\nor seven people kitty corner to our backyard and there were a couple of small\ndogs and four or five kids playing in another backyard on the opposite side.\nWhen I went into the backyard, I saw the coyote near the kids and there was an\nadult there basically trying to shoo the coyote away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, the coyote headed in the direction\nof the party with the little dogs. With the party-goers warned to get the dogs\ninside, they scrambled when they saw the coyote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were a couple of little dogs\nrunning around quickly, people running after them. The coyote went into full\npredatory mode — ears flat, back flat — and started coming in, not looking at\nme, but looking past me to try and figure out how to get in, grab a dog and run\naway. I had to get as big as I could, roar at the coyote until it decided it\nwasn’t a good idea to try and get by me. Once they are moving away, if you keep\nmoving towards them they will keep moving away. I shuffled it out of the\nneighbourhood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamie Kidder isn\u2019t the only resident\nwarning of coyotes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another neighbour, Alex Choy, says his\nsmall white dog Lua was attacked by two coyotes in their backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The incident, he says, was witnessed by\ntheir 13 year old daughter, who subsequently had a panic attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn front of the building where I live,\nthere is construction going on and I believe the coyotes have lost their\nnatural habitat,\u201d says Mr. Choy, noting his pup is recovering from surgery\nresulting from the coyote attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Kidder agrees with Mr. Choy\u2019s\nassessment of the impact swift development has had on the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe problem is with the development of residential neighbourhoods\nreducing wildlife space, unfortunately, and this is my opinion, when we do make\nthese communities one after the other, trying to keep a small, natural wildlife\narea in the middle is not going to end up good,\u201d he says. \u201cHow many years ago\ndid people used to hunt black wolves and bears right here in the Aurora area? Why\nare they gone? I don’t have anything against the coyotes, I am a dog lover, a\ncanine guy, but they are predatory animals and nobody wants to do anything. The\nTown won’t, Animal Control won\u2019t, MNR won’t and YRP basically explained that if\nsomebody is being attacked, call, and they will send the police over to shoot\nthe dog. It seems kind of … nobody wants to be the bad guy, but just like\nbears, wolfs and mountain lions, every other animal that is predatory to\nhumans, that we have moved out of our residential areas,  coyotes seem to hang around like raccooons\nbut they are not — these are predatory dogs and they will go after kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is going to be an unfortunate situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Residents in Aurora\u2019s northeast quadrant are urging caution following an increase in coyote sightings in new developments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-20-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6fi","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 02:26:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}