So, the residents of Rossmoor, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos and East Long Beach are perturbed because coyotes are apparently attacking defenseless Fidos and Garfields with ever more frequency, and the response from officialdom is to leave the American jackals be.
But close readers of this space should be able to see the natural solution to this problem is as plain as the snout on one Mr. Wile E. Coyote's face.
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It's roadwork near the intersection of the 405 and 605 freeways that is disrupting the shelter of coyotes, who are venturing out into the neighborhoods.
David Lara of the Rossmoor Homeowners Association tells the Long Beach Press-Telegram's Joe Segura that the Canis latrans should have been trapped and relocated before that freeway work began.
“We've been going around and around on this,” Lara is reported to have said as Rossmoor residents reel from 16 pet killings and one attack on a woman blamed on coyotes since May.
Lara claims to have hit up several agencies with his concerns, from the Orange County Transit
District and Orange County supervisors to Caltrans and the state Department of Fish
and Game.
Officials have either been slow or loathe to assist, he claims, maintaining that coyotes seldom act aggressively toward humans–and that the animals have the right to co-exist with people and their pets.
Well, if we may step in here: Do you folks recall the dust-up over Mission Viejo homeowners declaring war on bunny rabbits?
Why not do as Mr. Lara suggests? Set up some traps for the 'yotes. Then, bus 'em over to Mission Viejo and let 'em loose on the, um, protein possibilities hopping all around. That would take care of the Roosmoor and Mission Viejo scourges in one swoop.
You're welcome, fair citizens!
Actually, Navel Gazing would score, too, as we'd be able to eventually crank out a post on Mission Veijoans pleading for the right to shoot and kill coyotes.
We call that a win-win in these parts.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.