A New Hampshire father said he had no choice but to kill a coyote with his bare hands Monday after the animal attacked his 2-year-old son during a family hiking trip.
"There was no running away," Ian O'Reilly said after the incident. "It would not allow us to run away. It was very much the aggressor."
Reports say O'Reilly was out walking a trail in Exeter with his wife and three young children when the coyote appeared and lurched toward his son.
"It actually caught the hood of his jacket and was able to pull him down," O'Reilly said.
‘The power of survival’
O'Reilly said his wife quickly took the young children into her arms to prevent them from also being attacked.
O'Reilly said that's when he squared off with the animal.
During a 10-minute struggle, the coyote bit him twice, including once on the chest, O’Reilly said.
"I did kick him square in the jaw once that put him to the ground and I was able to jump on him after that," O'Reilly said. "It was snapping and attacking and lunging. The reason why it got me on the chest is because it was able to jump on me.”
Credit: Courtesy Twitter
Credit: Courtesy Twitter
O'Reilly said he strangled the coyote to death by sitting down on top of the animal and suffocating it with a scissor-lock maneuver "as tight as I could," he said.
"In the moment you don't really pay attention to what's going on, you just try and go with whatever goes through your brain, instincts I suppose," O'Reilly said, according to news reports. "Never underestimate the power of survival. That coyote was very much interested in living, but so were we."
Three related attacks
Kensington Police Department officers who were dispatched after the 911 call were actively searching for the animal when they learned it was already dead.
Police said the animal was likely the same one involved in three separate attacks that happened earlier in the day in the same area.
In those incidents, a 62-year-old woman was bitten, a vehicle was attacked, and another family was accosted on a walking trail, according to reports.
The coyote's remains are now being tested for rabies, according to New Hampshire Fish and Game officers.
Attacks across the country
There has been a recent spike in coyote attacks across the country.
Just last week, police in Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed a coyote after it bit an officer who stopped to help a stranded motorist, according to reports.
Before that, a pack of about five coyotes were suspected of killing a family's pet dog near the Suntree Country Club in Melbourne, Florida, police said.
On January 8 in Chicago, a 6-year-old boy was bitten on the head by a coyote as he walked with his nanny outside the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, according to reports.
Credit: Chicago Animal Care and Control
Credit: Chicago Animal Care and Control
Later that day, a coyote also bit a man on the buttocks, according to reports.
Wildlife officials say coyotes are known to attack after being conditioned to no longer fear people.
"Feeding wild animals is the same as signing their death warrant," wildlife trapper James Dean told the Associated Press. “People that are feeding wildlife, they may feel bad for them, but they're also hurting that animal.”
Rare but growing
Coyote attacks are rare, but have been reoccurring in major urban areas due to the growing number of coyotes near densely populated cities.
Coyotes have increased their range significantly since 1900, expanding to just about every corner of the country, including into major urban areas, according to the New York Times. The scrappy animals were first seen in the Bronx in the 1990s, and it's not uncommon to find them wandering the streets of Manhattan, reports say.
The New York Times reports that the reason coyotes move into urban areas seems to be that, like raccoons and white-tailed deer, they can adapt to living around humans.
They do remarkably well in cities, apparently having larger litters than they do in rural areas, the Times reports.
Other roving animals, like wolves, need space and bigger prey, but coyotes can survive on squirrels, mice, rabbits and birds, which make up most of their diet in Chicago, wildlife experts told The New York Times.
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