Coyote’s carcass set to be examined

A child bitten Saturday afternoon by a coyote outside the Canada Games Centre is fine but the animal had to be shot after displaying aggressive behaviour.

A child bitten Saturday afternoon by a coyote outside the Canada Games Centre is fine but the animal had to be shot after displaying aggressive behaviour.

Kris Gustafson of Environment Yukon said today the animal was shot in the parking lot.

The carcass was scheduled to be examined this afternoon to determine if there is anything that contributed to the animal’s unusual behaviour.

Whitehorse General Hospital spokesman Val Pike said the seven-year-old girl was bitten on the buttocks, but the skin was not broken, though there was some bruising.

Without the skin being punctured, and with virtually no substantial evidence of rabies existing in the southern Yukon in recent memory, Environment Yukon veterinarian Mary VanderKop said it’s extremely unlikely the girl was infected.

She said it’s also highly unlikely the coyote was even carrying rabies.

Shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday, Gustafson said, conservation officers and the RCMP were notified of an aggressive coyote hanging around the Games Centre.

A young girl was leaving the centre with her mother and was walking on the grassy area near the front entrance when she was bitten from behind, he said.

Gustason said a person chased the animal across Hamilton Boulevard into the wooded area near Valleyview. The coyote eventually returned and began bothering patrons near the front entrance and hiding in the nearby bushes.

Only after officers were called at 1:17 p.m. and the coyote was killed was it determined through conducting interviews there had been another incident earlier, he said.

A group of three young teenagers, Gustafson explained, had been confronted by a coyote in the vacant lot down the hill from the centre shortly before the girl was bitten.

He said the three were playing around near the piles of gravel where the new ambulance station is scheduled for construction.

“The coyote approached one of the kids,” he said. “He reached out and pet the coyote because he thought is was a dog, and it backed up and began bearing its teeth and circling all three kids.”

Gustafson said the kids scared off the animal but as they hastened up the bike path to the Games Centre, the coyote followed.

“We believe it was the same animal that bit the girl.”

Incidents of this sort are rare, and the senior conservation officer can only remember five in the last 30 years in the Yukon.

He recalls the time several years ago that he was forced to shoot a coyote on the steps at F.H. Collins Secondary School.

A subsequent examination of the stomach contents indicated the animal had been eating, and was likely being fed, human food, Gustafson said.

He said it’s probable the animals start associating humans with food.

“That is why we always stress, ‘Do not feed the animals. Do not feed the coyotes, or the bears, or the foxes….’

“Feeding the birds is OK,” he said.

The veterinarian said once animals become habituated to humans for one reason or the other, predators like coyotes can become desensitized or something less fearless, and begin to relate humans to a source of food, particularly small kids.

“Do not feed the animals,” she emphasized. “People do not seem to realize they end up dead.”

VanderKop said she was waiting to hear back the Yukon’s branch of environmental health to see if it wants samples of the coyote sent to test for rabies on an urgent basis.

Samples will be sent out by Environment Yukon as a matter of routine even if it’s not deemed to be a priority case.