Coyote Captured in Queens: NYPD

A coyote has been captured in Queens, the NYPD says. 

It was captured just before 8 p.m. Tuesday in Middle Village, police said. It's likely the same coyote that was spotted hiding against a house in the area Monday morning before it got away. 

"He might have gotten away once but not today," the NYPD's 104th Precinct tweeted. "We have caught the coyote at 77th Place and Caldwell Avenue." 

Emergency Service Unit officers were called in to tranquilize the animal, and officers transported it to Animal Care and Control. 

The capture comes just days after police tranquilized and captured another of the wily canids after a two-hour chase through lower Manhattan

The sighting is the latest brush between coyotes and humanity. On Saturday, a coyote was captured after the chase the World Trade Center and Battery Park City. 

On Wednesday, police spent hours chasing a coyote in the Upper West Side, captured exclusively by NBC 4 New York. Then on Thursday night a coyote was pursued by police in Morningside Heights.

At least four other coyotes have been spotted across Manhattan so far this year, including in Chelsea, the Upper West Side and Stuyvesant Town, according to Sarah Aucoin, the director of the city's Urban Park Rangers program.

In March a coyote was spotted wandering on top of a bar in Queens.

The string of recent sightings in Manhattan has drawn new attention to the wily critters that have been spotted periodically in New York since the 1990s. Experts say New Yorkers should expect to see more of them as they become more comfortable adapting to city streets and parks. 

With some coyotes ensconced and breeding in the Bronx, others are likely heading into Manhattan this spring to seek their own turf, said coyote project co-founder Mark Weckel, a conservation biologist at the American Museum of Natural History.

Coyotes were once creatures of Midwestern plains and southwestern deserts. But they have dramatically expanded their range in the last two centuries, partly because of declines in their predators, such as wolves and cougars, experts say.

Rabid coyotes have been turning up in New Jersey as well. A man walking his dog was attacked earlier this month in Bergen County by a coyote that later tested positive for the virus. A second aggressive coyote was also found dead in a trap over the weekend; that one was not rabid

In nearby Saddle River, another rabid coyote attacked a man and his dog while he was working in the yard. 

There haven't been any reports of aggressive coyotes in New York City, Aucoin said.

Wildlife experts say people can reduce the risk of coyote conflicts by not feeding them and securing trash and pets, among other steps.

"We'll just have to adapt our behavior and accept the fact that they're going to be around," says Patrick Thomas, general curator of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

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