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A toddler is in critical condition after suffering a savage mauling by a coyote while playing on the front porch, Dallas police said.
The attack occurred about 8.30am on Tuesday morning just north of White Rock Lake in Dallas as the child played in what was thought to be the safe environs of the family home.
A police officer on the scene took shots at the vicious creature in a nearby park, causing it to flee into woods. Police were unsure whether they wounded the animal.
A hunt is now on for the coyote with Texas Game Wardens taking part. Police warned residents should be considered extremely dangerous.
The child was rushed to a nearby hospital with serious injuries and remains in critical condition.
A photo of the actual coyote that attacked the two-year-old child in Dallas. Police shot at it and are unsure if it is injured. A hunt is now on for the creatures which police warned residents should be considered extremely dangerous
File photo of White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas. The attack occurred about 8.30am on Tuesday morning just north of White Rock Lake as the child played in what was thought to be the safe environs of the family home
The attack came less than a week after a coyote attacked a 2-year-old girl on Southern California’s Huntington Beach, biting her on the face in a savage and shocking attack.
The wild animal pounced on the little girl while she was with her mom and sibling near the pier at Huntington Beach, California at 9.45pm.
The girl, thought to be aged two or three, was taken to hospital by ambulance to deal with her serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
Authorities shot two coyotes on the beach which both ran off. Officers think one of the two was responsible for the attack and both are now dead.
State wildlife experts said the coyote evidently had been fed by neighborhood residents, whether intentionally or not.
Otherwise, the coyote would have shied away from human contact, said state urban wildlife biologist Sam Kieschnick.
Such attacks ‘are not just rare, they are exceedingly rare,’ he said.
A youngster was viciously attacked by a coyote at Huntington Beach in California. The animal can be seen prowling in the far left of the frame
The coyote jumped up and pounced on the youngster knocking her over onto the sand
The incident occurred when a mother took her two children to the ocean to paddle. She did not notice what was happening to one of her kids just feet away
The lack of fear of humans can be disastrous for the coyote, said Robert M. Timm, a retired wildlife biologist who has long studied the history of human contact with coyotes.
A report Timm co-authored for the journal Human-Wildlife Interactions cited a 2009 study that tabulated 142 reported coyote attacks on humans in the United States and Canada over almost a half-century from 1960 to 2006.
A 2011 study recorded 26 coyote attacks on humans in Canada between 1995-2010.
‘This is a difficult problem to manage, given the diversity of public attitudes toward coyotes, especially in suburban areas,’ he said in an email to The Associated Press.
‘It quickly becomes a political nightmare for cities, counties, and public agencies, as many people oppose any lethal control of wildlife, which at times is the only solution when some individual coyotes become habituated to living in suburbia to the extent that they attack pets and humans.’
Source: Daily Mail
