Side Note

Connecticut has declared war on coyotes

But the state’s proposal to allow night hunting of the animals just might make its coyote problem worse.

A rise in coyote sightings in residential areas has the Connecticut General Assembly considering a bill that would allow people to hunt coyotes at night, reports the Connecticut Post. Coyotes, a species that when living in urban areas tends to behave nocturnally, pose a risk not just for obvious reasons like potential attacks, but because they can contribute to the spread of ticks throughout an area. Per the Post it’s currently legal to hunt and trap coyotes during the day.

While on one hand, nobody wants their kid to get attacked by a coyote, it seems like an egregiously bad idea to let a bunch of people with guns go out at night and shoot at whatever coyote-shaped thing is moving around in the dark. Additionally, Priscilla Feral of the Darien, CT Friends of Animals organization told the Post that “killing some coyotes will trigger larger litters of pups and colonization behavior among the survivors.” In other words, if you kill a coyote, their children will seek revenge.

Besides, coyotes seem pretty chill as long as you don’t mess with them. The Urban Coyote Research Project, which studies coyote populations living in the Chicago area, has found that coyotes can actually help control an area’s rodent population. Another organization, the Urban Coyote Initiative, asserts, “there will never be more coyotes in an ecosystem than that ecosystem can support, so (despite what some people may think) a city can never become ‘overpopulated’ or ‘infested’ with coyotes.”

In closing, I leave you with the third least-bad Red Hot Chili Peppers song of all time, titled “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes.”

Listen to Anthony Kiedis. He’s a cool guy.