The hunt continues for an aggressive coyote that’s been attacking people in downtown Prince George.
After four people were bitten by a coyote near Victoria Street early Tuesday morning, the hostile canine went after a fifth victim, biting a man who had been waiting for a bus close to the Prince George Native Friendship Centre on Third Avenue. The bite caused minor injuries.
BC Conservation officer Eamon McArthur and his team worked through the night but were unsuccessful in their efforts to locate and trap it.
The same coyote is believed to have bitten a man in front of Millennium Park at First Avenue and George Street on the morning of Aug. 13 and is also suspected in a human attack earlier in the summer at Aberdeen Glen Golf Course.
McArthur says he is 100 per cent certain the coyote has become habituated to human food and now associates close human contact with a free lunch. He said one of the four victims bitten early Tuesday confessed he had been feeding the animal before it attacked.
“They just don’t act like this unless they are being hand-fed,” said McArthur. “All the markers of how this coyote is behaving are indicative of a fed coyote.
“We didn’t trap it last night. We were working all through the night and we had eyes on (it) but it moves pretty fast.”
Cole Grant knows people are feeding them. He saw it with his own eyes while driving home from work along Second Avenue on July 18, when he spotted a man sitting in his car in a parking lot tossing bits of food out the driver’s side window to a coyote. Grant snapped a few photos with his phone before he left the scene.
“The guy was feeding the coyote something out of the window and it was eating bits of food off the parking lot and I thought the guy shouldn’t be doing that,” said Grant.
“It was about 2 o’clock, pretty weird to see a coyote in a parking lot downtown. If he’s food-habituated to people then there’s a good chance that’s why he’s hanging around biting people. If we have coyotes downtown attacking people and you’re feeding them, that’s a bad Idea.”
McArthur reminded people not to approach the coyote or encourage it any way to come close. Also keep pets away and if you spot it, call the BC Conservation 24-hour line 1-877-952-7277. Once it is trapped, McArthur said the coyote will be euthanized to prevent further attacks and he will request a necropsy of its stomach contents to try to learn more about the animal and why it has been hanging around the city.
One of the coyote traps set up last night near Connaught Hill Park caught an orphaned bear cub conservation officers have long been searching for. McArthur said that cub will be taken to Smithers by Northern Lights Wildlife Society co-founder Angelika Langen, where it will be remain in the shelter for the winter, to be released back into the wild next spring or summer. It’s the fourth cub from Prince George this year to be sent to the Smithers shelter.
