Coyote Attack
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Suzann Erney plays with her dog Rocco Thursday in her yard in Middlesex Township. Rocco was attacked by a coyote in their driveway, near where they are playing. (Wally Shank/The Sentinel)
Rocco still has visible wounds on both back legs from the attack. (Wally Shank/The Sentinel)
Having a coyote attack her 85-pound dog was the last thing Suzann Erney expected Monday afternoon.
Waiting for her elementary school-aged children to come home, she was at the end of their long driveway on Wolf's Bridge Road in Middlesex Township. Rocco, the family pet, was on a retractable leash.
Then Erney saw a coyote suddenly run toward Rocco. She struggled to get the dog more than 100 yards down the driveway and into her car. By that time, the coyote had inflicted cuts and puncture wounds on Rocco's back legs.
Coyote brazen
Once inside the car, Erney beeped the horn to scare off the coyote.
"He just stood there and watched me," she says. "It was very scary."
Rocco, an 85-pound "labradoodle" — part Labrador retriever, part poodle — was taken to Carlisle Small Animal Clinic, where he received a rabies shot, antibiotics and had his wounds flushed.
"He's doing OK," Erney says.
She believes the same coyote was shot about a half hour later at a neighboring farm.
A Pennsylvania Game Commission officer estimated the coyote's weight at 45 pounds, Erney says.
Mary Jayne says her husband, Don Jayne, shot the coyote at her mother's farm.
"They're just everywhere," Mary Jayne says of the coyotes.
Her mother raises goats, chickens, ducks and geese — and has had problems with coyotes chasing them.
"Mom called and said (the coyote) was right outside the yard fence," Mary Jayne says. "Earlier, it was up behind the chicken house."
Don Jayne went to the farm and shot the coyote while it stood there.
"They'll attack anything," Mary Jayne says of coyotes. "They're just as bold as can be. I worry that they'll attack Mom."
Others worried
Scott Erney, Suzann's husband, also worries about the coyotes.
"We are in an area where there is a neighborhood fairly close by. There are kids playing," he says. "This is something the public should be aware of. I would feel horrible if something happened to a child or pet."
Don Garner, information and education supervisor of the Pennsylvania Game Commission's southcentral region, says at least 5,000 coyotes live in the state.
He says it's "extremely uncommon" for a coyote to attack a dog while it's being walked on a leash.
"That's the first I've ever hard of them trying to pull down an 80-pound dog," Garner says.
Coyotes are not confrontational animals and do their best to avoid people, he says. But coyotes are also "opportunists" and will eat whatever is easy to get. They would eat a copperhead snake, blueberries, "a McDonald's sandwich" and even "a dead groundhog lying along the road."
"We know that one of the coyote's favorite meals is the house cat," Garner says. They'll also eat smaller dogs.
"Coyotes are extremely adaptable. If it can take in calories and take it pretty easily, then that's where they'll be."
Tough time of year
Garner has one theory about what might have provoked the coyote attack.
"This is a stress time of year for wildlife," he says. "That's probably one of the main motivating factors for a coyote to take on something bigger than it is."
The animal was not tested for rabies because the Jaynes want to take the body to a taxidermist and the rabies-testing process involves cutting into the brain, rendering the carcass unmountable.
The number of coyotes in Pennsylvania is probably as large as it will get, Garner says.
Because there is no way to control the coyote population, the state imposes no hunting seasons and no bag limits on them.
Suzann Erney had never seen a coyote until Monday's attack.
"I just don't think the community is aware they're out there," she says.
She says she no longer walks Rocco at home.
"We now drive in town and take walks" there.
