Sad Looking Coyote discovered trapped in Chicago Metra Station (downtown)

Chicago Sun Times
http://www.suntimes.com/5127247-573/sad-looking-coyote-discovered-trapped-at-loop-metra-station.html

A female coyote that looked “like Wile E. Coyote after a rough day with the Road Runner” was unharmed and taken into the care of the proper authorities after she was found trapped at a Metra station in the Loop Sunday morning.

“The call came in to us about 7 a.m. of a coyote trapped in a Metra station at 440 S. LaSalle St.,’’ said city Dept. of Animal Care & Control spokesman Brad Powers. “We found a female coyote in good health.’’

The LaSalle Street station, on the Rock Island District Line, is located at 414 S. LaSalle St., according to Metra’ website.

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They get downtown living off of the bushes and foilage along railroad tracks. The old Rock Island Station as well as the IC station due east of where this one was caught..(maybe half mile or so) contain brush, rodents, and other food that the coyote will eat. They are very resourceful, and contrary what is thought, very bright. Eight or nine years ago, they found one near the Art Institute which is right off Michigan Ave. He/she got caught under a taxi. No I don't know how it got there either but that picture of the coyote under the taxi was on the front page of one of the Chicgo papers. Yes, they caught it and released that one too.

While America is full of species endangered by human expansion, coyote populations have been exploding. And coyotes are full of diseases like rabies and mange, and have a nasty habit of killing people's pets for sport.

From Wikipedia,

"Coyotes thrive in suburban settings and even some urban ones. A study by wildlife ecologists at The Ohio State University yielded some surprising findings in this regard. Researchers studied coyote populations in Chicago over a seven-year period (2000–2007), proposing that coyotes have adapted well to living in densely populated urban environments while avoiding contact with humans. They found, among other things, that urban coyotes tend to live longer than their rural counterparts, kill rodents and small pets, and live anywhere from parks to industrial areas. The researchers estimate that there are up to 2,000 coyotes living in "the greater Chicago area" and that this circumstance may well apply to many other urban landscapes in North America.<57> In Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park, coyotes den and raise their young, scavenge roadkill, and hunt rodents. "I don't see it as a bad thing for a park," the assigned National Park Service biologist told a reporter for Smithsonian Magazine (March 2006). "I see it as good for keeping animal populations in control, like the squirrels and the mice."

Note: they kill rodents and small pets...scavenge roadkill...
...I am guessing they do not kill the pets for fun, it is to feed themselves and families.
Me= no expert..

I remember the first time i saw a coyote at a wildlife refuge in Delaware. It was in a field, maybe about 40 feet away so i had a chance to study it well. I kept thinking, that is the strangest mutt i've ever seen! LOL! It took me a while to realize that was no doggie. We had heard reports that coyotes were moving into the mid-Atlantic area but i didn't expect to see one so soon. Beautiful creature.

Can you imagine living in the wild your whole life and somehow magically ending up dropped in the middle of a city, grossly outnumbered by humans and their loud technology? Poor thing. I'm glad she's okay.

According to the Cook County Coyote Project, they're well established in Chicago.

being in a Chicago park and being in a subway station. That's all I'm saying.

:P

dog was actually half coyote. They are close relatives of wolves and domestic dogs. Still they will kill a small dog or cat if hungry enough.

Our pet was the sweetest thing and pretty well socialized to people but was wary of certain men who came to our door once being so upset by someone at our door that she literally plunged through the glass panel to get to him. Sadly she died the night our eldest was born, from poisoning.

Her other coyote habit was she couldn't resist or be trained to resist carrion or discarded food. The day I was in labor my husband took her for a walk and she spied some meat left out and that night died on our bed. Needless to say I was devastated. We have always believed that someone left the meat on purpose lathered with some sort of chemical.