The last time we checked in with Caltrans (see related story below), they still could not find any coyotes at the back of Rossmoor – try telling that to Julie and Randy. In separate unrelated coyote attacks, she was threatened by two charging coyotes and his puppy is lucky to be alive.
“I don’t scare easily, I’ve traveled all over the world, I’m pretty sophisticated – I probably haven’t been frightened like I was on Thursday, in thirty years,” Julie McDannold-Miller, Rossmoor resident, yesterday told OC180NEWS. It happened “On Montecito, just past Bradbury, on Thursday morning [January 20, 2011] about 5:30 AM”
She was out for an early morning jog.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I thought were two dogs running at me. They were coming up on my right from the other side of the street. I turned around and I could see they were coyotes. At first they were [charging] – this wasn’t a dog running up to say hi. It was menacing, I felt very uneasy, so I stopped and took my shoes off and was prepared to defend myself – I haven’t done that in thirty years of jogging in Rossmoor.
They stopped, at that point, they were probably about twenty feet from me. In addition to waving my shoes around, I was yelling – “GET BACK – GET BACK – I was just trying to convey aggressiveness instead of fear. I was walking backwards, trying to get away, we were within ten to twenty feet of each other for ten minutes. I kept waving my shoes and backing up.
I wasn’t actually sure what I was going to do. I was right at the gully-ditch, and I was thinking I want to be near some homes in case someone did open their door, I could run in there. Any time I moved, he moved toward me, then the other one would come up close to him. So, I just stood there and then obviously they heard something or saw something, because all of a sudden, the leader pricked his ears up, and steamed off the other way and the other one followed him.”
“It was really quite frightening. They were coming toward me in the dead center of the track, this was nowhere close to the perimeter of Rossmoor. They never got within ten feet of me, but I truly believe they would have, had I not been aggressively waving my shoes toward them and screaming. I haven’t run since.”
When Jessie, Randy Wind’s four month old Labrador puppy, went outside for a potty break, she wasn’t so lucky.
“It was a fluke thing, early Sunday morning [January 23, 2011], about 1:15- 1:30 AM,” he told us. “I got up and took her outside and it was really cold and damp. So I came back in to grab a sweatshirt.”
He was only inside for a few seconds and then he heard it. “There was this blood curdling , primitive scream – I don’t know how to describe it, it was something like I’ve never heard before,” Wind told OC180NEWS. He rushed outside. “She was on her back with this animal on top of her. I screamed and ran out toward it. We’ve got a six foot block wall – it leaped up and over it.”
Wind told us his backyard is completely enclosed by walls and gates, the lowest of which is about five feet tall. “The coyote must have been in the back yard when I set her down,” he said.
Due to Winds quick reaction, Jessie survived the attack with an injured hind leg and puncture wounds on the neck. She is expected to recover. The Wind family has four children – a little boy four and a half, and three girls, ages 13, 11, and 8 years old. Wind said his children are” Traumatized” by the backyard coyote attack.
“It’s a little bit weird – eerie, – I’m scared to go outside,” he told OC180NEWS. “Here is an animal in our back yard, trying to kill our pet, in what you think is your safe zone – to think that this is your sanctuary – your back yard – it’s unnerving.”
The coyote attacks on Randy and Julie caught them by surprise, but such attacks are no surprise for Rebecca Lara of the Rossmoor Predator Management Team, a local residents group dedicated to safety in Rossmoor. Rebecca and her husband David have been tracking coyote attacks in Rossmoor since last May, and doing everything they can to get government attention.
The Laras are concerned that the freeway construction land clearing behind Rossmoor will disrupt coyote habitat and send the animals into Rossmoor.
“One can only suspect that because of the grubbing and vegetation removal, the coyotes are now migrating,” Rebecca Lara told OC180NEWS. The Rossmoor Homeowners Association apparently shares those concerns enough to pay the cost of limited coyote trapping in the area.
“I’m extremely concerned that Caltrans will not let the trapper place traps on their property,” Rebecca Lara told OC180NEWS. The trapping has not captured any coyotes so far and the contracted time period for placing the traps is over.
According to Milt Houghton, President of the Rossmoor Homeowners Association Board of Directors, “Right now, we have not allocated any funds to go beyond this initial ten days.”
“In order for trapping to be effective, it has to go on for at least thirty days and have more than just two traps,” Rebecca Lara told us. “The trapping is limited, it’s too large of an area to cover with just two traps.”
The unincorporated area of Rossmoor must rely on the private all volunteer homeowners association to fund coyote control efforts because no governmental agency will do it. Unlike Rossmoor’s incorporated neighbors, there is no local government agency with authority over animal control for Rossmoor. At OC180NEWS, we have written extensively on this subject – see related articles below for more background and information.
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
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