Coyotes : ‘The coyote that has been wined and dined has lost its fear of humans. Coyotes have to be made afraid of humans and turned back into the hills.’

Brooke had a daily ritual, and that’s what did her in.

As usual, the white terrier began yipping and scratching at the back door of the Marrows’ place in La Mesa just as the sun inched above the horizon. The dog’s owner, Kathleen Marrow, obediently let the small pet out into the backyard.

Predictably, Brooke headed for the soft earth beneath a leafy thicket of pepper trees just behind the oatmeal-colored house, which sits at the edge of a yawning valley carpeted with ragweed and eucalyptus.

On this morning, however, three coyotes lurked in the shadows. Before Brooke could even bark, the beasts pounced on the startled little dog. It was no match. They dug their fangs into the terrier’s wiry white fur and dragged her off into the ravine.

Within minutes, Marrow began to wonder where the dog was. She checked the backyard. No Brooke. She looked along the side of the house. Nothing. Her husband, Tom, joined the hunt. Peering over the back fence, he spotted the coyotes huddled over the family’s prized pet, ripping at the dog’s bloody underbelly.

In a blind rage, he ran into the fray. Two of the coyotes trotted off, but the largest was defiant and refused to retreat. Marrow sprinted back up to the house for a club, a gun, anything to drive the animal away. When he returned, however, the coyote was gone, and so was Brooke.

“We never found anything, no remains, not even her license or collar,” Kathleen Marrow said. “I never thought the coyotes would do something horrible like this to our sweet little dog.”

The tale of Brooke’s demise is not an unusual one in San Diego County. In recent years, collisions between coyotes and mankind have become commonplace. Packs of coyotes are almost a fixture in some rural neighborhoods, loping nonchalantly down paved streets and across lawns past startled residents out to pick up the morning paper. They raid trash cans, and occasionally ambush pet cats and dogs.

Although the coyote has been here about as long as the land itself, conflicts between man and beast have started to escalate only as subdivisions and shopping centers have crept farther into the once-desolate territory that has traditionally played host to the wily critter. Indeed, state and county officials report that run-ins with coyotes are most prevalent on the fringes of civilization, along the outskirts of communities like Fallbrook, Rancho Penasquitos and Tierrasanta.

But the coyote is a clever animal, remarkably adept at surviving in both rural and urban worlds. In some cases, the animals have been surrounded by development, yet adapted quite well to their new environment. Residents say they regularly spot coyotes roaming San Diego’s canyons, surviving against all odds in the greenbelts riddling such densely populated communities as Kensington and Clairemont.

“Coyotes are a natural part of the ecology around here,” said George Story, director of citizens assistance and information for the City of San Diego. “They’re in the outlying areas, but we’ve also got them in Mission Valley, Encanto. Just about any place there is food and a certain degree of cover and safety, you’ll find the coyote. They’re about as common as the cockroach.”

Some experts contend Southern California’s coyote population is growing despite the rapid incursions of mankind on the animal’s territory. That phenomenon is occurring, they suggest, due to the coyote’s innate ability to live near society.

“The coyote is learning to capitalize on man in terms of feeding from garbage cans, from dog food dishes,” said Terrell Salmon, a wildlife specialist with the University of California’s cooperative extension. “We’re seeing an increased population of coyotes using that urban interface.”

Once found primarily in the Southwest, the coyote has spread during this century to 49 states. (Hawaii has never had the beasts.) Mostly, the animal has remained in the wild, subsisting on a natural diet of rabbits and rodents. But in fast-growing Southern California, confrontations between humans and coyotes have become increasingly common.

That interaction primarily involves coyotes scavenging in garbage or nabbing pets, but on occasion the animal has attacked humans. The half-dozen incidents that have taken place in Southern California since 1980 have been in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Coyotes there have stalked infants or small children left unattended in neighborhoods on the edge of the wilderness. In 1981, one young child died after she was mauled by a coyote in Glendale.

San Diego County has been remarkably free of such incidents, especially considering that the region has a coyote population that some experts estimate is as high as 500,000. If anything, most residents seem resigned to the fact that coyotes are a part of life in the area.

“It’s just one of the things you have to live with,” said Glenn Prentice, a Rancho Penasquitos resident whose home sits in a subdivision abutting an undeveloped stretch of chaparral that harbors coyotes. “Basically, it’s just nature. Because of the coyotes, it’s very hard to keep a cat or small dog in our neighborhood. But the more homes going in, the less we feel the impact.”

Some homeowners, however, are more acutely troubled by the presence of coyotes. Helen Flint, a Solana Beach resident, said she has seen packs trotting ominously about her neighborhood east of Interstate 5.

“I’ve heard that one woman in the area had a coyote grab her dog from her while it was still on the leash,” said Flint, who lost her own pooch to coyotes that jumped a fence to get into the backyard. “Many of the older people in the area don’t go for walks outside in the evening because they’ve encountered coyotes trotting along three abreast.”

Dolores Klasen of Clairemont has seen five of her cats disappear in the past three years. All of them, she believes, fell victim to the coyotes that live in the canyons near her home.

But those aren’t the only neighborhood casualties, she said. A resident up the road lost a toy poodle, a rabbit and a guinea pig. Another neighbor saw a coyote assault his miniature schnauzer, inflicting severe bites before the wild animal was driven off.

“If a coyote can pick up a dog next door, then what about a baby?” Klasen wonders. “They’re really a nuisance. Then again, if people in the canyon would just quit leaving food out for them, the coyotes would probably go someplace else.”

Eager to allay the fears of residents, county officials are attempting to battle the coyote through creation of a trapping program. Set to be run by the county agricultural commissioner’s office, the $60,000 project involves the hiring of two professional trappers who will respond to calls from residents.

The project was due to begin in October but was put on hold indefinitely after the federal government froze its 50% share of the program’s funding because of budgetary problems, said Gary Reece, who is coordinating the program for the county.

Reece said county officials hope that the trapping project, once under way, will help stabilize the number of coyotes, reducing complaints from homeowners as well as farmers and poultry ranchers troubled by the animals.

“The coyote population seems to have grown and, of course, people are moving out into areas that have always been occupied by the coyotes,” Reece said. “Eventually you have a conflict.”

With the county’s trapping program still in limbo, some residents plagued by so-called nuisance coyotes have turned to an outfit called the National Predator Callers Assn.

Based in San Diego County, the group’s approach is simple. Members use animal calls--anything from an injured rabbit’s squeal to the sound of a cat--to lure a coyote out of the bush. Once the animal is in sight, they take aim with high-powered rifles and shoot it.

Fletcher Diehl, the organization’s founder and top marksman, insists such lethal measures are necessary because the county’s coyote population has exploded far beyond permissible limits. Not only are coyotes becoming a nuisance for agribusiness, ranchers and homeowners, but the critters pose an increasing threat to other species of wildlife, Diehl said.

“The coyote definitely has a place on our earth,” Diehl said, “but without man to check the coyote’s population, other things are going to suffer. And that’s a proven fact.”

Group members, who number about two dozen, are allowed to shoot coyotes as long as they first obtain a permit from the state Department of Fish and Game. Diehl said he fields as many as five calls a day from residents eager for the organization’s services.

Just after dawn one recent morning, Diehl and another member of the group, a dark-haired fellow who gave his name only as Oscar, hiked up a canyon near Escondido that had been the base for a band of coyotes troubling a farmer in the flatlands below. Outfitted in camouflage garb, the two men set up a portable loudspeaker. Hunkering down behind a stone the size of a bathtub, they began playing tape-recorded animal calls.

After about 10 minutes, a young coyote trotted up and sat down on a rock 75 yards across the canyon. Oscar took aim with his bolt-action .22-caliber rifle. The first shot missed high and the coyote scampered up the slope. It was Diehl’s turn, but his shot also missed its mark. The coyote scrambled to safety into some brush.

About 90 minutes later, the two tried again. This time, a female a little bigger than a sheltie strolled down the canyon edge to investigate the commotion. Diehl fired one shot from about 100 yards, blowing a fist-sized hole through the animal’s shoulder blades.

Later, Diehl loaded the coyote into his truck. This animal would be disposed of, but Diehl skins the ones that aren’t ruined by gunshot.

“There are so many coyotes now that they’re having to work in shifts,” Diehl said. “You could poison, shoot and trap coyotes for the next 10 generations, and you may make a dent in the surplus population. Maybe.”

The efforts of the Predator Callers Assn. have drawn considerable criticism from leaders of animal-rights groups, who contend that the deadly methods of Diehl and the rest are both inhumane and unnecessary.

“I personally don’t feel that it’s up to mankind to control the coyote population,” said Martha Hall of Project Wildlife. “Killing should be the last resort. But with Fletcher, it’s the first resort. It’s like he’s still living back in the Wild West where you shoot first and ask questions later.”

Coyotes, she said, play an integral role in the ecosystem. Indeed, the animal benefits man by devouring pests such as wood rats, California voles, pocket gophers and ground squirrels, a potential carrier of the plague.

As an alternative to Diehl’s group, Hall is eager for Project Wildlife, a nonprofit group that cares for sick or injured animals, to launch a live-trapping and relocation program for coyotes.

But many wildlife experts say such a project would prove unfeasible. Coyotes are extremely territorial and would not survive long if moved into a new region, they say.

“If a person has true compassion for an animal that has become a problem, then they’ll do away with that animal,” said Walter Howard, a professor of wildlife biology at UC Davis. “Catching a wayward animal and moving it is done for selfishness. It gives the human a feeling that they’re giving the animal a chance. But the fact is most coyotes that are translocated will usually die.”

Such logic irks Lila Brooks, director of California Wildlife Defenders.

“The urban coyote problem was created by the people, not the animal,” she said. “Therefore, restrictive measures have to be directed at the people and not the coyotes.”

Brooks said a few simple steps on the part of humans sharing territory with coyotes are needed to ease problems.

Chief among them, she said, is that residents should not provide food for coyotes by setting out table scraps or leaving pet food in dishes outside. Moreover, homeowners should take great pains to secure their trash cans, which provide a rich supply of food that regularly draws coyotes to a neighborhood. Finally, pets should be locked inside during evening hours, when coyotes are most likely to be roaming outside.

In an effort to put the strength of law behind her beliefs, Brooks drafted an ordinance forbidding the feeding of coyotes that has been adopted by the County of Los Angeles and several Southern California cities, among them San Clemente and Claremont.

“The coyote that has been wined and dined has lost its fear of humans,” Brooks said. “That whole trend has to be reversed. Coyotes have to be made afraid of humans and turned back into the hills.”

That would be just fine with Kathleen Marrow. On many nights since her dog was devoured, Marrow has awakened to hear a pack of coyotes howling in the night.

“Some nights we wake up and it almost drowns you the sound is so loud,” she said. “It’s the most eerie thing. They howl and they whoop. Then all the dogs in the neighborhood join in. “I’ve lived in Wyoming and never heard anything like it. Here we are in the middle of town and we have to put up with this.”