MORAGA — Police officers have stepped up patrols where a coyote has bitten five people and still might be roaming, in hopes of stopping it before anyone else gets hurt.
Most of the effort is taking place around dawn and dusk, when coyotes are known to be especially active and in the neighborhoods where the animal has attacked, including Campolindo Drive and Calle la Montana in Moraga, where the coyote recently bit a 3-year-old girl.
“It’s mostly regular mobile patrols,” Moraga police Lt. Brian South said Thursday, “with officers hoping to see whether the coyote might emerge.”
Officers are not parking, but driving slowly through the areas, South said.
A similar effort is underway in nearby Lafayette, said Capt. Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the lead agency searching for the animal.
Local police officers have the authority to shoot the coyote if it’s spotted, Foy said.
South said he hopes, however, that traps will snare the animal, which so far seems to be wary about approaching them.
“We always have to be mindful of other safety concerns when discharging a firearm in a residential area,” he added.
If the coyote is seen outside a home or business, officers would first try to follow it, South said, and would continue monitoring it until animal control or representatives from Fish and Wildlife arrive.
Callers have been reporting possible sightings of what they believe is the coyote, Foy said.
He did not know the number of calls, but said some residents have also contacted his agency, offering their properties for a trap site.
The idea behind placing the traps on private property is to reduce the risk of people coming into contact with them. Called “padded gripping body traps,” the traps are similar to steel-jawed traps, except they have a rubber lining to reduce injuries.
Moraga Police Chief Jon King said encounters with coyotes are inevitable in parts of the East Bay.
“The reality is one of the wonderful things about Moraga is that we have open space right next to us, and we are going to have coyotes encroaching,” King told the town council on Wednesday, when it got a briefing on actions to apprehend the animal.
Nobody called into the council meeting to talk about the attacks.
The latest attack happened Thursday night outside a Kwik Stop Market, 3458 Golden Gate Way in Lafayette.
According to DNA evidence, the same coyote bit the toddler Feb. 16 at Campolindo Drive and Calle la Montana in Moraga as she was walking in the morning with her mother.
The animal’s first attack happened last July, when a 2-year-old boy was bitten at Moraga Commons Park, 1425 St. Marys Road in Moraga.
In December, the coyote bit a man who was exercising after dark at Campolindo High School, 300 Moraga Road, also in Moraga. The same month the animal bit an employee of Diablo Foods, 3615 Mount Diablo Blvd. in Lafayette, as he was taking a work break outside.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services division laid the traps near where the attacks have occurred.
Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County sheriff’s office, which contracts with Lafayette to provide its police services, declined to comment Thursday on what that department is doing to help capture the coyote, noting that Fish and Wildlife is the lead agency.
Most aggressive interactions between coyotes and people happen when the animal is rabid, or it’s defending itself, a mate or pups, or because people are feeding the coyote, according to Lynsey White, a director at the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, D.C., who has written an academic study on coyote attacks on humans.
Coyote attacks on people are rare with an average of about 10 to 20 cases per year in the U.S., White said via an email.
“Is there one thing behavioral that distinguishes (this one) from all the other coyotes that seem very easy to trap?” Moraga Councilman David Stromberg asked during Wednesday’s meeting, wondering whether the animal was rabid.
South said he did not know whether it may be rabid, but that witnesses have said the coyote appears healthy.
Authorities are working to capture the animal “day and night,” he said.
Foy said the coyote will be euthanized if captured, then tested for rabies.
Police ask anyone with information or who spots a coyote in the area to call 925-284-5010. People who encounter a coyote should make loud noises and even throw rocks if necessary to chase the animal off.
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