Anna Contreras was at her home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood on the evening of June 21 when a neighbor called to say a coyote was running down Agnon Avenue with a small dog in its mouth. Contreras ran to the window, but by the time she got there, the coyote was gone, so she reviewed footage from minutes before on a home security camera that’s pointed directly at the street. She was horrified by what she saw.
OLD AND BUSTED: “Mile Markers on the Road to Detroit.”
The New Hotness? Mile Markers on the Road to Mad Max! Coyote-fearing locals are putting vests with spikes on their tiny dogs in San Francisco.
The video, she said, showed the dog squirming wildly, trying to get out of the coyote’s mouth. “He drops it, and then the dog had its ass up in the air, it was growling and barking at the coyote. Then [the dog] took off running toward Mission and the coyote pursued it.”
Contreras said she does not know whether the coyote scooped up the dog again. She did not report the incident to San Francisco Animal Care and Control because, she said, “they’re not going to come out for anything like that.”
Back in 2007 Glenn noticed the phrase “fur children,” and wrote in response, “I ran across this term — meaning pets you have instead of, you know, real children – a while back and was bothered. I mentioned it to a friend from DC, who remarked that it wasn’t uncommon to see women, and even men, on the street with a cat or small dog in a baby carrier.”
It was a pretty common term (and trend) when I lived in the Bay Area back then. But to be honest, I was expecting their fur children to have to be defended from being coyote appetizers a decade and a half later.