Excerpts from a story by Sara Pagones, May 27th, 2013, for the Advocate entitled,

“St. Tammany residents alert to bold action by predators.”

St. Tammany Parish —

“On Lakeview Drive, which runs along Lake Pontchartrain outside Slidell, coyotes were showing up in people’s yards during daylight hours last summer.”

 “Cats began disappearing in Mandeville’s gated Beau Chene subdivision in late December, property manager Bill Mayer said. In one case, a homeowner saw the cat being carried off by a coyote.”

“Parish animal control doesn’t handle coyote complaints and neither does the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, which only provides a list of licensed trappers. It’s up to the homeowner to pay the trapper. And that can be daunting.”

“On Lakeview Drive, trapper John Schmidt set traps about three months ago, according to Fitzpatrick, and it took about a month to succeed, but then two were caught on the same day.”

“Jerome Howard, a biologist at University of New Orleans, said that people need to make their homes less attractive to the animals.

Coyotes are scavengers and would definitely be attracted by shrimp shells, for example. Keeping garbage contained and yards scrupulously clean makes a yard less interesting to a coyote, Howard said.”

 “There have been cases of small dogs being attacked while on the leash, Howard said, and that scenario could put a person at risk, too.”

 “They are very dangerous animals, and people do not understand sometimes they are not just strange-looking dogs. It’s a little bit of an education to try to get people to take it seriously,” Howard said.

For the complete story click here.