Hide your pets: Coyotes are here

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Jim Williams didn't want anyone thinking he'd been into the grape, so he began his letter with the qualifying statement, "I am a lifetime hunter and fisherman, as well as overall wildlife enthusiast so I am very confident that I know what I observed."

Williams, who lives within 75 yards of Rock Creek Park, said he recently awoke at about 2a.m. to a series of high-pitched canine yips and howls. "They were steady and uninterrupted for at least five minutes," he said. "They reminded me exactly of the coyotes I listened to in northeastern Maine while on fishing trips a few years ago. Nonetheless, I discounted this idea because of my location, and I forgot about the incident.

"[Later] while at the intersection of Oregon Avenue, Nebraska Avenue and Bingham Road NW, I watched a large adult coyote come out of the Rock Creek woods and hunt about the open space there. The color, size, appearance of the animal, as my niece and I watched it for 3-4 minutes under the street lights, left no doubt as to its identity. The coyote slipped back into the woods after a 30-second stare-down with us."

Williams added that he carried a duck call in his car and when he blew it, the coyote bounded within 15 yards of the automobile, sniffed and stared, then loped off into the direction of the nearby Rock Creek Garden Association.

"Until this time I was unaware of coyotes in D.C.," Williams wrote.

Williams also said a Virginia game warden told him coyotes have been shot by deer hunters at the Quantico Marine Base, and he's heard of coyote sightings along the nearby Potomac in Maryland.

Now add Matt Hancock, who resides in the western Charles County community of Nanjemoy. During a black powder deer hunt, Hancock saw a coyote and shot it. Mind you, this is Southern Maryland -- an area pretty much surrounded by tidal water. What in the world was a coyote doing in Nanjemoy, and how did it get there? Not only that, you can bet your last dime that it wasn't the only one that made its home there.

Bob Duncan, the Wildlife Division Director for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, agrees.

"It's almost certain that this Charles County coyote didn't live there all by himself," he said, meaning, of course, that the chance of more coyotes making their home around Nanjemoy is practically assured.

"We've seen coyotes run through busy intersections in Hopewell, not far from Richmond. Coyotes are pretty much established all over the state," said Duncan, a 27-year veteran of the VDGIF.