Here you are walking in the middle of San Francisco with your dogs and all of a sudden, you're prey.

Another what the??? Story

Coyotes are everywhere. We have packs of them on the Monterey peninsula and even here at my mom's, in suburban St. Louis, they are running around.

Friends of my parents, who have a herd of miniture horses, have a giant long-haired Portugese guard dog (only 60 of them in the US)imported expressely to protect these tiny horses from the local coyotes. And this is as suburban as it gets!

We have so many coyotes out here that I am having a hard time digesting that. But then again I have to remember that I do not live in a city or a suburb where habitat for wild animals is growing smaller everyday.

I would agree that they either wandered to close to a den with pups though, they were young coyotes that lost their mother early and had not learned to hunt properly, or, that there was something wrong with them.

We have coyotes go through almost every night here, you can hear them yipping and howling for miles. They pretty much keep their distance with all of the dogs I have here barking at them.

Still makes one wonder though........

I see lots of them here in the outskirts of Los Angeles during dawn and dusk. I think they sound like little girls laughing when they all start that "yipping".

We have them here too...lots of them. They come in pretty close to the house but they always make a run for it when I turn on an outside light or let my dogs out into their (fenced) yard. I've only ever seen one that wasn't shy, and even weirder, it was during the day. I had heard that he was collected by the Fish and Game Department because something was wrong with him. I can't imagine that a coyote would make trouble under normal circumstances.

A coyote took up residence in the woods on one of our favorite trail running locations this summer (about 3 miles from downtown state capitol) - I say "took up residence" because we (and no less than 2 other runners with dogs) reliably ran into him in the EXACT SAME SPOT on more than half a dozen different days, so I'm thinking it may actually be a female with a den... Either way, the first encounter was a COMPLETE surprise and my off leash dog was off like a shot after it . It seemed to me like the coyote actually STALKED us a ways then revealed itself just long enough to engage Oscar - it was obviously not keen on me, but my dog was VERY interesting to it Luckily, Oscar came back, this time with the coyote chasing HIM, and all he got was a tiny nip in the rear (Oscar's all up to date on shots and the critter looked rather dazzlingly healthy...). I now leash him when we get near "the spot" and completely avoid a certain section of trail all together.

I always thought of them as gangly, skinny little things, but apparently, some east coast coyotes have interbred with wolves on their way back from extermination here - so they're quite large, but not technically wolves. A game warden friend of mine who sees a fair number of them shot by farmers said they weighed in one that was 90lbs just last summer - excuse me but, DAMN! I've been told packs of them will "lure" dogs out into the woods then attack them... and at 90lbs, it wouldn't be hard for a pair of them to do real damage. Whatever their wild canid tactic, I admit, they scare the right crap out of me - the one we saw looked suspiciously like a wolf and easily weighed 85lbs...

~Natalya

We have them here as well. I live on the southwest end of Denver towards the mountain area. I've seen a few at night while walking my dog, but as soon as she barks, they bolt. I never thought to try to get near them, but I never feared them attacking neither.

I always thought coyotes were shy animals but with so much of their habitat being developed I guess they have no choice but to live where they can. I remember when I lived in Montana about a mile from the Mission range and would hear coyotes at night. One very cold morning on my way to the only store within miles of where I lived I happened to look across a field and saw a coyote stranded on a frozen pond. I stopped my car and watched as it slid and slipped around on the ice trying to get on solid ground. Finally it made it to the side and ran off. I haven't thought about that morning until I read the coyote story. Ahhhhh, memories....

Denver, the Monterrey Penninsula or even in the east bay where I live it would fit, but San Francisco 85 percent concrete with row houses built on top of one another and office buildings.... Rats and Pigeons, stray cats but not Coyotes.

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I always thought of them as gangly, skinny little things, but apparently, some east coast coyotes have interbred with wolves on their way back from extermination here - so they're quite large, but not technically wolves. A game warden friend of mine who sees a fair number of them shot by farmers said they weighed in one that was 90lbs just last summer - excuse me but, DAMN!

YES! They DO look like wolves and they're HUGE, but I've been told emphaticly that they aren't wolves and have heard them referred to as "northeastern coyotes"....weird. I was also under the impression that coyotes are solitary, and that it is wolves that hunt in packs. These fellows that we have here most definetly travel in packs...large packs of 20 to 30 animals. They can be scary to encounter, for sure. I haven't had any trouble with them, but I wouldn't want to run into any in the woods for sure.