Some not-so-friendly four-legged animals roaming around Oak Brook have residents in one of the village's northern neighborhoods worried.
The concern is so great that it's prompted the village board to consider various options of dealing with the unwanted animals, including trapping and or even culling them.
A sportsman himself, Trustee Asif Yusuf said he could support allowing licensed hunters to use bows and arrows if necessary, since Oak Brook prohibits the discharge of firearms.
"Clear them out in a weekend," Yusuf said.
Other village officials were less enthusiastic about that method of dealing with coyotes.
"Any type of hunting I would have an objection to, unlicensed hunting," Village Manager Rick Boehm said. "Euthanizing ... I don't think that would be a method the village board would endorse."
Trapping is another option, but it could be costly.
One firm said it charges $750 just to set up one trap, $25 a day for inspection and an additional $150 for each coyote trapped, Boehm said.
"I cannot even gauge what this could do to our budget," he said. "This is a tough issue to get around."
The traps also could be problematic in that they could snare other animals, Village President Kevin Quinlan said.
"We are a community that enjoys our pets," he said.
It would be terrible to learn a dog got caught in a trap intended for a coyote, he said.
The dilemma is not uncommon in suburbia, said Carl Strang, naturalist at Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn.
With development continually paving over green space, more coyotes are moving into suburban neighborhoods across the country, Strang said.
Coyotes also might be more noticeable in the fall, when parents send their young off to find their own territories, he said.
The animals resembling small German shepherds primarily are nocturnal and shy. They generally are not aggressive, but there was a rash of reports in California and Arizona of people getting bit when they tried to feed the animals, Strang said.
DuPage County Animal Care and Control has no reports of anyone here being bitten by a coyote. By comparison, the agency gets roughly 900 reports annually of dog bites.
Coyotes have been known occasionally to attack dogs, including a Yorkshire terrier in Lake Villa and another breed in Kane County's Campton Township. Cats and dogs weighing less than 20 pounds can be potential prey for coyotes, which typically feed on rodents and water fowl, Strang said.
For that reason and others, Willowbrook recommends residents keep smaller pets indoors and monitor them when outdoors.
"There are a number of reasons pets should not be let loose," Strang said. "There are a lot of hazards. Getting hit by a car is more likely than getting attacked by a coyote."
Willowbrook discourages trapping or killing coyotes, or any wild animal for that matter, as a solution.
"Removing a coyote or any nuisance animal only opens space for another animal to move in," Strang said. "Unless you remove the conditions attracting the animal, all you're really doing is hanging out a vacancy sign. The conditions are there, and another one will just come in and replace it."
He added: "Coyotes do offer benefits via rodent control and geese control."
Hunting is banned in most if not all of DuPage County. When the county forest preserve district has culled deer, it has had to get permission from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and bring in government sharpshooters to handle the work.
Strang said the best protection against coyotes is to avoid feeding them intentionally or unintentionally. Keep smaller pets inside and don't leave pet food outside, especially at night.
"The presence of an animal is not necessarily a problem," he said. "They'll stay shy and out of sight if no one feeds them."
http://www.dailyherald.com/search/ma...?intid=3830626