Susan Morin walks her dogs, Pepper and Max, near her home at 1312 Morgan Court early this week. Max, her boxer, was attacked recently by a pair of coyotes.

West Lawrence residents Michael and Susan Morin routinely hear the howling of coyotes at night.

“It sounds sometimes at night like they are right on our deck,” Susan Morin said.

But she heard an even more frightening sound last week after letting their 60-pound boxer, Max, and 15-pound Shih Tzu, Pepper, out for a quick bathroom break about 9:30 p.m.

“I heard the little one barking and about 15 seconds later, I could hear the boxer attacking and other noises,” Susan Morin said.

Coyotes’ prey

The couple got into their car and drove around the street to investigate the commotion, pointing the headlights toward a tree-lined open field behind their home. They saw two skinny coyotes run off and Max lying on the ground.

“He just laid there, and we couldn’t get him up,” Susan Morin said. “He just looked like he had been beaten up.”

Pepper was unscathed during the incident, but Max suffered from a few bites and swollen hip.

“It’s just scary because we could have lost him,” Susan Morin said. Since the attack, the Morins don’t take their dogs outside without being on a leash.

Susan Morin didn’t think coyotes would hurt Max because of his size. Coyotes typically weigh between 25 pounds and 30 pounds, with large ones weighing about 40 pounds.

The incident is unusual, said Matt Peek, furbearer biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks Operations. Typically coyotes don’t attack big canines, and Peek said he thought Max was protecting Pepper. While coyotes typically feast on rodents and rabbits, they will eat a small dog or cat.

Marty Birrell, nature education supervisor at Prairie Park Nature Center, said she helped investigate the death of a West Lawrence resident’s dachshund that was dragged over a fence and killed.

“I went out and looked at the tracks, and they were clearly coyote tracks,” she said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

Wildlife experts said coyotes typically are afraid of humans and shouldn’t attack them. However, there have been reports of coyotes doing just that. A 5-year-old boy in Middletown, N.J., was bitten by a coyote in May and needed 46 stitches to the head. In 1981 in Glendale, Calif., a coyote killed a toddler.

Settling in suburbia

Peek said he couldn’t estimate how many coyotes might be in the area or state, but he said there are an abundance of them. Every year, about 80,000 coyotes are legally harvested in Kansas by hunters and trappers, he said.

He said more and more coyotes are showing up in urban neighborhoods because housing developments encroach upon their habitats. Often coyotes can settle in areas such as West Lawrence because food – rabbits, rodents, cats and human food – is plentiful and the risk of danger is minimal.

“They are not shot at and somewhat protected,” Peek said. “It’s a pretty secure area for them.”

To discourage coyotes from staying in an area, residents should keep their pets and pet food inside.

That’s exactly what Robbin Loomas, who lives on Wagon Wheel Road, is doing after the remains of her striped cat named Cuddles were found near the intersection of Harvard Road and Goldfield Street. She now tries to keep her three other cats inside.

Loomas has lived in the area for 11 years and had outdoor cats during the entire time. She said that she was aware of at least six nearby residents whose cats were either missing or found dead.

“For 10 years, I’ve had outdoor cats and felt perfectly safe in this neighborhood,” she said. “Something seems to be rapidly taking out the pets, and it seems to be escalating.”

Birrell, of the nature center, said she has received several calls from West Lawrence residents concerned about predators. Birrell said great horned owls, bobcats and coyotes can prey on cats. But she suspects coyotes because of the size of one resident’s Maine coon cat that was killed recently.