Mission Viejo is a city located at the southern end of Orange County. A little on the upscale side, it was carved out of hillsides and part of the plan included green belts, lots of park lands, and all that other greenish nature stuff city people like when they can afford to pay for it.For years, I've read about city council meetings attended by angry residents demanding coyote control. These people don't seem to understand that when you live surrounded by nature, nature has a habit of appearing in your backyard to make a meal out of your family pet.
Years, and years... pet owners crying. Do something! Do something!
Stupid people. I actually knew one woman who, now get this...
bought bags of dog food to throw over the fence into the canyon behind her home. Why? To keep the 'yotes out of her yard.
She didn't think it was funny when I suggested it might be more effective if she threw her (latest)dog,(latest)cat, and her pet bunny over the fence instead, and never replaced them.
I'm not sure if the city ever got their coyote problem(?) under control, but apparently in at least neighborhood the coyotes need to be brought back because now Mission Viejo officials have given the go ahead to a homeowners association in a gated community here to control its rabbit population by shooting the animals with pellet guns.
When will they learn?
8 comments:
I agree with you on this one, Gino. Urban sprawl selfish and destructive to nature, and people who want to live in the middle of coyote land need to quit bitching about losing their pets. Go live in town. For goodness' sake. Wild animals and nature is why people go on holidays and vacations.
So, they can't just shoot the 'yotes like we do in texas?
We get coyotes in downtown occasionally (although the County does relocate them to Forest Park when they figure out where they are denning) and have an extremely healthy raptor population (which occasionally leads to unpleasant bits of squirrels and songbirds dropped onto local playgrounds, eww, but COOL!). Pets and our urban livestock (mostly birds) tend to go to the raccoons if they go. Fishponds are subject to raccoon and crane predation ...
Portland is working to re-up on the greenways thing over the next 20 years. There is concern about cougars and bears, but I'm pretty sure we'll make it happen anyhow. I personally think people ought to be somewhat worried about the elk, which herd about around the suburbs, and, you know, are plenty big enough to injure bikers and joggers on these proposed greenbelts, but ... whatever. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Perhaps Portland will take up firearms for self protection, and I will laugh at the irony of it all ;).
Robin Williams, describing coyotes hanging out in the back yard: "You're cat's got sh*t sometime, lady!"
Can you humanely kill a rabbit with a pellet gun? I've shot a few pigeons with one (they were shitting all over my balcony and generally creating a nuisance) and it seemed to me the only reason that was effective was because I was at really close range. Rabbits have much thicker skin and more muscle. But maybe the gun I borrowed for the job was just a particularly anemic one...
your standard $50 daisy air rifle will kill, but it better be a solid shot to the head.
these guys will be using a much higher velocity airgun. they make them that can compete with a .22.
but they cost a few hundred more than your daisy. and are highly accurate within their range.
we dont buy that kind for our 6yr olds, though.
Coyotes are smart and adapt. I've seen one in my neighborhood, which is very much "in town." I have also seen a fox and any number of deer. And the rabbits around here don't even run away any more when they see a human.
We also have a snapping turtle in the neighborhood that's about the size of a Subaru Justy. The larger point -- all the animals adapt.
We've had rabbits living under my tool shed for years, and we've seen fox and wild turkey in the yard, and I've seen deer tracks in the snow (and we're definitely an "inner ring" 'burb). We've heard rabbits taken in the night by owls, too. There are too many dogs in the neighborhood for a coyote to go unnoticed, but they have been sighted in the 'burb south of us.
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