Wild predator mammals are scary enough, but sometimes they can have a fellow feeling for humans, as does my kitty.

Reptiles? Yikes! They’ll bite yer head off and eat you, in cold blood!

OTOH, we have had bark scorpions in the yard which are automatically targeted for death.

I do worry about rabies. When they start coming up peoples’ decks maybe there’s something wrong with them.

BTW: My village may be urban sprawl but it’s 158 years old urban sprawl, designed by the same guy who designed Central Park in New York. It happened to be in the route of Burlington-Northern Santa Fe so post-Civil War Chicagoans could get to their summer homes in about 20 minutes.

The problem is animals that associate humans with food, rather than associating them with an animal that’d kick their tail.

This is thanks to the same dipshits who feed the ponies down at Assateague State Park here. They’ve survived just fine since that Spanish galleon crashed in the 1600s….but they need your marshmellows and Wonder Bread. Fuckin idiots. Every year ponies have to be destroyed because they become too acclimated to humans.

No accident that the coyote problem is in Cali–do gooders thinking coyotes need or even benefit from humans feeding them.

A real sweety, he seems to be. Some human will prolly kill him.

Some coyote in Kali, who really does need killin, prolly won’t be killed, and will eat some stupid human’s stupid kid.

This is one of the many reasons why I drink.

Coyotes aren’t, on their own, bad. Animals don’t have the capacity to be automatically bad. They’re great for getting rid of a lot of smaller critters, and nature does need predators like them, or you end up with rats and gophers everywhere.

The problem is animals that associate humans with food, rather than associating them with an animal that’d kick their tail.

You don’t have to be a patchouli wearing birkenstock nerd to understand why it might make sense to coexist rather than destroy sometimes.

I don’t think it’s “infinite wisdom” to prefer that your children and live stock not be eaten by black bear, wolves, and cougars.

Holy strawman, Batman! Cause yeah, that’s what I was saying…yawn…and we all know wolves eat peoples children all the time. The reality is we haven’t really given much thought to where and how we sprawl, but then people bitch and moan when they buy into suburban sprawl and are confronted by the animals that used to live there too. I certainly don’t have a problem with plinking an aggressive animal that’s targeting a child or a domestic animal, I just think it funny that people are surprised that coyotes are running rampant because, as you pointed out, the only predator they have left is us.

I don’t think it’s “infinite wisdom” to prefer that your children and live stock not be eaten by black bear, wolves, and cougars. I believe evolutionary biologists call it survival of the fittest. Coyotes are running rampant because suburbs are far more hospitable to them than rural areas and suburb (and city) dwellers tend not be able to stomach the hunting and trapping required to keep them in check. But we haven’t removed their biggest competitor. We ARE their biggest competitor. We didn’t land from space ships yesterday either, you know.

And the same webpage that tells you how to lawfully hunt ‘yotes also runs the bunnyhugger’s paens about how the ‘yotes are just part of the biosphere, and have their place.

Well…that’s because they are part of the biosphere. They didn’t land from space ships yesterday. Because in our infinite wisdom we’ve removed their major competitors and predators, they’re running rampant and as such we have to try to check their populations.

If someone can get some cash for doing a public service, they might as well take it.

That’s the problem with hippies … they teach animals that humans ( themselves ) are food, and then we normal folks have to re-educate entire species the hard way.

Just buy a $38 hunting license.