Update: 1010 Wins has amazing video of the coyote giving cops the slip around 23rd Street around 3 a.m. last night. That means he headed south instead of his usual north. Cops chased him–while someone shouted Let him go! Let him go! Then he was spotted heading back up to 57th Street, probably the Hallett Nature Preserve, where he’s been sleeping in Central Park.
The coyote (really a coywolf) continues to prowl around Central Park, despite what he hear are efforts to trap and euthanize him. I went up to Central Park last night to catch a glimpse. I got nothing. But Bruce Yolton tracked him out of the Hallett Nature Preserve, where he sleeps during the day, and through a circuitous path of the lower park, avoiding people. I called the Department of Environmental Conservation, but so far haven’t heard back about their plans.
The state DEC is trying to capture the coyote and euthanize him to test for rabies, which is infecting raccoons in the northern part of the park, one wildlife rehabilitator told us. Killing an animal is the only sure way to find out quickly whether it has rabies. Or you could just wait and see if he gets sick. This rehabber is qualified to take the coyote in for a quarantine period (10 days) so he wouldn’t have to be killed, but so far the DEC hasn’t given the okay. If someone just so happens to catch the coyote and bring it to the rehabber, fine. Meanwhile, another rehabber says the department is getting tired of being thwarted and may try to shoot the coyote with a tranquilizer.
Of course, no one is going to accidentally catch this coyote. I’ve gone up there three times at dusk, eagerly looking and only caught a glimpse of him once. I am getting to know the lone wood duck that is hanging out with mallards in the pond, I met some nice visitors from Virginia who were bemused with our excitement and I got to play with an experimental digiscoping tool: a video camera hooked up to a night vision scope by some hardware from Ace. It looks very country. I’m not sure I’ll be able to focus. But you can imagine that if a coyote happened to wander into the range of my lens at the right moment, how neat that would look.
Read an interview with Coyote Tracker John Way
See Wildlife Around New York City
Wouldn’t it be nice if this were a picture of a coyote instead of a bunch of rocks?
Somebody is going into the Hallett Nature Preserve where the coyote sleeps during the day
Even the feet on this wood duck are fancy. Why does he keep hanging out with the homely mallards?
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