A disturbing home security video has put residents in a West Los Angeles neighborhood on edge, showing a group of coyotes roaming the area and raising fresh concerns about pets being targeted.
The footage, recorded last week, shows the coyotes moving through the neighborhood in the dark. In one unsettling moment, one of the animals attacks and kills a cat before carrying the feline away in its mouth.
“I hate to hear about cats or dogs, or little dogs, or little cats,” West LA resident Gale Barnum told CBS News. “It just hurts.”
Adding to residents’ alarm, the same camera captured a dog and its owner walking through the area only moments after the attack.
People who live in the neighborhood told the outlet that coyote sightings have become increasingly routine. Some believe changing weather conditions and displacement from recent fires may be pushing the animals closer to homes.
“That’s all pushing them into areas of human habitation. They don’t want to be here any more than we want them here,” another West LA resident, Brad Artson, said.
Now, residents are urging city officials to take action, saying the growing presence of coyotes poses a danger not only to pets but also to young children who play outside in the neighborhood.
“I do hope that the city and the state are doing what they can to find them and then humanely send them to places where they can just live their lives far away from us,” Artson told the outlet.
The fear isn’t unwarranted: A few years ago a Ring camera captured the harrowing moment a coyote attempted to drag a small child away in broad daylight in Woodland Hills, KTLA reported.
A family in Orange County faced a similar problem this year with coyotes killing seven of their beloved goats.
Despite a humane attempt at deterring the animals from their home, Steve and Karen Blume, who live on a one-acre property in Nellie Gail Ranch in Laguna Hills, are being sued by their HOA for raising the backyard fence beyond the community’s six-foot height limit without first getting approval.
Which begs the question from residents like Barnum: “They don’t belong here, and how do we get rid of them?” she told CBS.
While California promotes nonlethal and preventive approaches to getting rid of coyotes, like ensuring food is secure and making yourself larger to scare away them away, in Utah they have a much harsher method: paying citizens to kill them.
Since 2012, Utah has offered hunters and trappers $50 for each coyote jaw or scalp they bring to state wildlife officers, KTLA reported.
There are as many as 750,000 wild coyotes living in California, according to the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
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