AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2007 > November > 19
Monday, November 19, 2007
Meet my new neighbor, Mr. Coyote…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are coyote traps in my neighborhood.
That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write in a work of non-fiction. It’s right up there with: “Hey, great, my season tickets to the opera showed up in the mail today.”
We live in Mountaire Springs, which has been around since the late ‘50s. The neighborhood has magnificent mature wooded areas surrounding our homes.
It’s not like those new housing developments where someone comes in, shaves the land down to the dirt and drops a bunch of cookie-cutter houses with one forlorn sapling in the yard before moving on.
We have woods around our homes and with woods come critters. Squirrels, chipmunks, possums, rabbits, raccoons - thankfully, no skunks — and now, apparently, coyotes. I’ve never seen one loping through the ‘hood but I have no doubt they’re here.
In an adjacent subdivision I drive through frequently I used to spot a fox now and then, usually in the evening. So the idea that a coyote or two might find our wooded areas nice and homey doesn’t surprise me.
And hey, this is their neighborhood, too. We evict all the critters and we’re really mucking with nature, which is something we humans tend to do without thinking long-term.
A few years ago my wife and I were at a friend’s island beach house. A regular on the island showed me panther tracks. He said some people complained but he liked having the panther around because it hunted late at night and kept the island rat population under control. Would I rather have a panther, who kept to himself, or rats? Here kitty kitty.
And while I want to be critter-friendly, in the case of coyotes they need to be caught and released far from here. They might carry some nasty diseases and they might also dine on someone’s pet.
As for the rest of the critters, mi ‘hood su ‘hood.
Permalink | Comments (51) | Post your comment | Categories: Jim Osterman
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
