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Community Corner

Coyotes Need to Eat, But Not in Your Yard

Coyotes don't come into your backyard to enjoy the patio cover. They come for food.

Coyotes are a perennial danger in Diamond Bar, but there are many ways homeowners can discourage the unanticipated visitors from snooping around.

Robert Garnica, a Los Angeles County Pest Control worker, said that interaction between urbanized coyotes and people has grown in recent years.

Part of this change, Garnica said, is that county staff no longer makes regular rounds but waits for calls from residents who have sighted or experienced a problem.

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This year, he said, calls from suburban foothill communities flooded the office, bringing a team of trappers out in an attempt to restore the peace.

The root of the problem

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Conflict between humans and coyotes isn't always the problem.

"People feel sorry for the coyotes," Garnica said. "They start feeding or putting water out and then the coyotes lose their natural fear of man."

This is when it can get dangerous, Garnica said.

When coyotes trot about streets in bold daylight, as though they are just dogs off a leash, the wild animals have lost their best protection: their fear of man.

Ken Pellman, spokesman for the county agricultural district, said that problems reported in residential areas are most often caused by one coyote who has claimed the turf.

"If you have multiple people from the same specific area saying there's an aggressive coyote, it's probably the same coyote because they are territorial," Pellman said.

For a time, Garnica said, he was the only trapper serving the Diamond Bar area. As public safety concerns and reports of coyote sightings increased, a dedicated team was formed to address the problem in foothill communities, including Diamond Bar.

Life on the urban edge 

In June of 1987, the National Wildlife Federation certified our home as a Backyard Habitat. Designed as a floriferous woodland opening on the edge of a chaparral covered canyon, encouraging interaction between wildlife and our garden drives our landscape decisions.  

Over the years, we have learned that nature is not satisfied with just love. She demands respect.  Sporadically, we’ve listened as neighbor’s pets die horrific deaths.

We’ve also experienced the extreme good fortune to see our Min-Pin/Chihuahua mix go nose to nose with a coyote and get away without a scratch. 

Our dog saved its life with exactly the right strategy for a person facing a coyote. She made lots of noise and made no bones about her willingness to get aggressive.  What went through the coyotes mind may have been, “Why is that bunny barking?”

Whatever the wild animal’s hesitation, it gave my husband a spare second to arm himself with a shovel left out near the back door. The coyote turned and sailed over our six-foot fence like it was no higher than a brick.

With trappers greatly outnumbered by coyotes, it is good to know that there are many things a resident can do to not have a family member or pet become a coyote attack statistic.

Organic ways to keep wildlife at bay

Coyotes are omnivores and will forage for whatever they can find. Feeding domestic pets in the open can invite that foraging into your yard.

City and county officials suggest serving your animals in the kitchen, a roofed kennel or closed garage will keep your pets from becoming prey. The same goes for water.

Many other things that will bring coyotes to your yard come of their own will, like rabbits.

While the bunny-rabbits are undeniably cute, they are hopping meals for the coyote. To discourage rabbits enjoying her vegetable garden, author Sharon Lovejoy sprinkles her garden with flour. The bunnies hop elsewhere to eat.

Next on the list of coyote bait are skunks. Rotting fruit on the ground is gourmet food to these felines, so make sure to pick it up.

Opossums are another challenge in Diamond Bar, but they have a weakness. The wiry marsupials freeze when a flashlight sends a beam of light in their eyes.

A simple two-person strategy harmlessly makes the critter want to bolt:

  • Person one aims the beam of light at the opossum’s eyes.
  • Person two blows paper darts made from magazine pages rolled up like an ice cream cone at the creature through a short length of PVC sprinkler pipe.

Before ridding of these creatures, you must know where they lurk. Camping spotlights are a great way to conduct a sweep of your backyard before and during a pet's evening outing.

It gives you a chance to know what is out there and declares your presence. Keeping a bat or another club-like item is a good precaution.

For those with doggie doors, there are remote devices for your pet's collar that act like garage door openers.

The gadget won't protect your animal while it is outside, but it greatly reduces the potential for unwanted intruders, including the four-legged variety.

Chemicals and Traps

Overall, success in sharing the same hillside communities comes from making food, water and shelter difficult to access. But sometimes, traps and poisons are necessary to take care of a pest problem.

Traps are most effective where numbers are small. In our first Diamond Bar home, my husband caught 10 mice in 15 minutes. With that kind of company, w moved on to carefully adding poisons as a weapon of last resort in the war against rodents — mice, rats and squirrels.

Use extreme caution when baiting for mice or rats and always wear disposable gloves when handling these "chemical baits." When finished, these gloves go straight to the outside trash container and the lid is shut.

Choose locations that are fenced separately from play areas and away from root zones of food crops.

In 2010, , Fumitoxin, after improper use at a Utah home led to the death of two young girls.

In this vein, gophers and other burrowing pests are tricky. An effective method when the yard starts to look pitted as the lunar surface is to mix bait in a plastic baggie with juicy orange slices.

Leave the bag open and poke holes in the bag before placing deep into a burrow. If an infestation is located where there is a slight chance a pet might want to get nosy, cover the hole with a square of plywood weighted with bricks — lots of bricks.

There is no such thing as being too careful when working with poisons around the home or garden. Every day they are in use- check around the bait stations to be sure nothing dislodged and look for rodents in the process of dying. Once you are secure with your pest control efforts, it is wise to dispose of any leftover poisons and their containers.

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