Coyotes live among us in metro Atlanta

Listen. Those yips in the dark, the rustle of something in the moon-silvered night? Dogs?

Listen again. Dogs don’t sound like that, but coyotes do. And right now there are plenty to hear.

This is the birthing season for the coyote, a onetime rural resident who’s moved to the suburbs and into many city neighborhoods and finds them to his liking. Across metro Atlanta — across the continental United States, in fact — female coyotes are having litters right now. As they nurse the pups, the males, accompanied by a few of last year’s offspring, are patrolling their turf, keeping it safe from outsiders.

That turf may very well include your back yard, and experts say there is little you can do about that. Get rid of a coyote, and another one is likely to take its place. Get rid of a coyote family, and things may quiet down — for a while. Then, one night, you’ll hear another yip.

Because their families are growing, Canis latrans are hunting more than ever just now. Watch your pets.

John Underwood and Chip Elliott, who have more than two decades of coyote-trapping experience between them, know.

“They’ll eat anything,” said Elliott, who operates Atlanta Wildlife Relocators. “They’re like possums — except they eat possums, too.”

“They’re very smart,” added Underwood, owner of Atlanta Animal Evictions. “And, no matter how smart we tell you they are, it does not do them justice.”

Pooling their money

People who live at the end of West Paces Ferry Road, near the Chattahoochee River, are neighbors with a shared concern. When one makes a sighting, the e-mails begin: I saw a coyote this morning ...

Kim Noonan has been swapping news of coyote sightings with her neighbors since she and her husband, Tom, bought their home six years ago. What was at first a novelty became a nuisance, then a heartache. Three years ago, a coyote killed Pete, the Noonans’ Jack Russell terrier.

When the sightings become more frequent than they like, the Noonans and their neighbors pool their money and call a trapper to remove the animals and kill them, which the law allows. They recently hired one. In recent years, other neighborhoods and municipalities across metro Atlanta also have tried trapping, shooting, relocating.

Coyotes, says an exasperated Noonan, are an expensive fact of urban life. Costs of removing coyotes vary, but getting rid of a family can easily exceed $1,000. “It’s upkeep, you know?” said Noonan, who keeps a close watch on the family’s three remaining dogs. “It seems like they are more and more prevalent.”

An ‘allegory of Want’

Coyotes once were indigenous solely to the American West, where they subsisted on anything that crossed their paths. People back East became acquainted with them in 1872 with the publication of “Roughing It,” Mark Twain’s account of his western travels.

“The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton,” Twain wrote. “He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want.”

Hunger may be what drove it to migrate. Biologists say the coyote began expanding its range about a half-century ago. Today, they live in every state in the continental United States, plus Alaska. Coyotes arrived in Georgia in the 1970s, and have taken root like kudzu.

Steve Smith, a biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, is director of the agency’s Georgia office, based in Athens. He agrees with coyote trappers: The animals are like the tides, unstoppable.

“They’ve completely redefined the word ‘adaptable,’ ” he said.

The state Department of Natural Resources doesn’t keep track of coyote populations. They aren’t a protected species, meaning they can be hunted or trapped year round. Law forbids poisoning the animals, but beyond that, “It’s pretty much open season on them,” said DNR biologist Don McGowan.

McGowan, who’s routinely called to Atlanta’s suburbs to investigate sightings of bears, bobcats, alligators and other creatures, believes metro Atlanta’s coyote population may exceed those in rural areas. The pickings here are better. Coyotes, he noted, eat creatures we don’t like having around, notably mice and rats. They also gobble up road kill, rabbits, chipmunks, voles, insects and fruit, as well as the contents of trash cans and pet-food bowls — pets, too.

“They have a very flexible diet,” he said. “Sometimes, that can mean a house cat.”

Consider the story of Spooky Jones.

A lucky cat

Cydney Jones was on the phone, talking to her mom. The Alpharetta resident left her back door ajar so her five cats could take in the early-fall morning sun on the deck.

“I saw something run past the window — fast,” said Jones. A heartbeat later, Sarge, one of her big cats, scrambled back inside and hid behind a shelf. “That’s when I knew something was wrong.”

She ran up the stairs and peered through a window at her front yard. A slender animal loped across it. A coyote. In its muzzle the coyote held something black and furry — Spooky, a friendly stray she’d adopted nearly a decade earlier. Jones ran into the yard and screamed: “You put him down!”

The startled coyote dropped the cat and fled. Jones packed the battered cat into a carrier and took it to emergency care.

Spooky survived the 2009 attack, but not without a series of operations, including a procedure to strengthen and straighten its severely twisted spine. Jones is reluctant to say how much it cost to put Spooky back together again: “I think people would be mortified if they knew the price.”

The cat is OK, if a bit clumsier than before. Today, he prowls a back yard that has a recently erected, 6-foot-tall wooden fence, a coyote barrier.

Most cats, said Dr. Jean Sonnenfield, who operated on Jones’ pet, aren’t as lucky as Spooky: They just vanish, a meal for a hungry predator.

Sonnenfield, who works in the emergency room at Georgia Veterinary Specialists in Sandy Springs, estimates that she treats three to six animals a year that were mauled by coyotes. The real number, she said, might be higher. Her patients aren’t capable of describing their attackers, so what some vets assume are dog attacks may be wounds inflicted by coyotes.

And missing animals? “I’m suspicious about all those ‘Missing Cat’ signs I see everywhere,” she said.

Those cats, Sonnenfield thinks, won’t be found.

Extended family

A mother coyote typically has three or more pups. In seasons when the population is depleted, biologists say, she may deliver more. About a week after they’re born, the mother coyote will move their den; the scent of their births may attract predators.

The father coyote, meanwhile, stakes out an area of several square miles. Like all canines, he marks its boundaries, sending an unmistakable message to other coyotes to keep out. He often has two or three coyotes, born to the family the previous year, to help out. They patrol the area, catch food for the nursing mother, and keep an eye on the pups when mom needs to take a break.

In fall, when the pups are adolescents, the father coyote drives off the children from the previous year. Next spring, the pups will take over as protectors and mother’s helper. It is, say the people who study these animals, a sublime arrangement. They are bound by blood and instinct, intellect and wile.

As for us humans? We’re bound to live with them, like it or not.

So listen. Those are your neighbors calling, and they’re hungry.

Coyote resources

www.georgiawildlife.com/node/1391: Coyote facts from the Wildlife Resources Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources

www.awareone.org: Atlanta Wild Animal Rescue Effort has a primer on dealing with urban coyotes

Coyote-proofing your home

Experts say you can make your home less attractive to coyotes. Michael Ellis of Atlanta Wild Animal Rescue Effort recommends the following:

● Keep an eye on your pets. Don’t allow them to wander from the yard.

● Don’t leave pet food bowls outdoors. Even bringing them in at night won’t work. Coyotes are drawn to the lingering scent of pet food.

● Get lock-top garbage cans.

● Attach garbage cans to the house or fence, or build an enclosure for them.

● And this: Remember that you are part of the natural order. Most animals consider human beings predators, so act like one. If you encounter a coyote, “Clap your hands, yell,” said Ellis. “Scare it.”

He also has these suggestions for elected officials:

● Revise ordinances, where applicable, to require garbage containers outside restaurants to have locking tops.