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Not so wily, coyote in Pinellas sends a signal

The 37-pound female is the first of 10 the county and two USF graduate students have permission to tag and release.

By THERESA BLACKWELL
Published October 10, 2006

SAFETY HARBOR — The coyote was caught virtually on someone’s doorstep, but it wasn’t taken to a wildlife refuge or a farm in the country.

Instead, it went right back to the woodsy neighborhood where it was captured.

Pinellas County officials Tuesday released the coyote, now fitted with a tracking collar, into the dense woods near Philippe Parkway as part of a two-year study of urban coyotes in Florida’s most densely populated county.

Neighbors were surprised to learn that the coyote was coming back.

“Are they whacked or what?” said Beth Widera, who lives two doors down from where the coyote was captured Sunday . The area has lots of children and pets, she said. “That’s incredible.”

Surprising perhaps, but done in the name of science.

The 37-pound female is the first of 10 coyotes that Pinellas officials and two University of South Florida graduate students have received permission to capture, tag, release and track.

The data they’ll get will help researchers learn more about coyotes in Pinellas — where they go and what they do.
Coyotes are known to hunt house cats and have attacked some dogs, but county officials do not consider them a threat to people. There are no reports of them biting a human in Pinellas.

So the county’s current approach is to treat coyotes as wild animals that are part of the environment, and here to stay.

“We’re going to leave them alone,” said county urban wildlife officer Rick Stahl. “Just like alligators.”

Along with another study of coyotes in the Brooker Creek Preserve, this study may give researchers some indication of how many coyotes are in Pinellas — a number that no one can pin down with certainty.

What is known is that coyotes have been in Florida for at least 30 years. Some might have been imported by hunters. Others migrated south from Georgia. As development continues, encounters with them grow more frequent.

The one caught this week was taken just yards from State Road 580, traveled by 37,000 cars and trucks a day, on a street of estate homes that sell for a half-million dollars or more.

***

In the dense woods along N Parrish Lane, the first sign that the coyotes had arrived was when the rabbits started disappearing.

Some residents had seen the predators, but not like 26-year-old Allen Arana, a server at the Safety Harbor Resort and Spa.

Early Sunday, he heard noises outside and watched from his window as two unfamiliar animals lingered on his doorstep. He said it looked like a courtship was in process.

“At first I thought it was neighbor’s dogs,” he said. “They didn’t look raggedy or anything.”

But they didn’t leave, so he called the Sheriff’s Office.

By the time a deputy arrived, one had left, but the other was dozing on Arana’s landing. That looks like a coyote, the deputy said. He called Pinellas County Animal Services.

Arana said the sleepy coyote was easily captured in the alleyway that leads to his door. He had no idea what the animal’s fate would be as it was loaded and taken away but guessed its future would be short.

How wrong he was.

***

Capturing a coyote healthy and safe was a breakthrough for D’Nara Manning and Sarah Clavio.

“I’m thrilled,” said Manning, a University of South Florida graduate student who is researching the life and ways of the coyote in the Brooker Creek Preserve and urban Pinellas.

Before this week, the coyotes had remained elusive enough that Manning and Clavio, another USF environmental studies student, had studied only dead coyotes.

The captured coyote had heartworms, like all the dead ones, as well as hookworms, Stahl said. It was given a rabies shot, though coyotes are not known to spread the disease.

The students and Stahl put the reddish-brown female in a pet carrier and set it down in a wooded area. They left her there for about an hour so she could get used to her surroundings.

They opened the door and waited for her to leave. She didn’t. Manning opened the door wider and tilted the carrier up.

The coyote dashed into the woods and, everyone hoped, toward the rest of her pack.

“We determined this was probably her home range, and she’ll get back to her family group,” Stahl said.

Despite her misgivings about returning coyotes to an area near children and pets, Widera said she can understand the need to get the coyote back to its pack. As a grade school teacher in Nevada, she taught students about coyotes.

She appreciates the county’s plan to study the urban coyotes. “The more you know,” she said, “the safer it is.”

Times correspondent Terri Bryce Reeves contributed to this report.

Theresa Blackwell can be reached at tblackwell@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4170.

[Last modified October 10, 2006, 23:06:14]