No Coyote Complaints In 2019: Burr Ridge Police

BURR RIDGE, IL — The Burr Ridge Police received no coyote-specific complaints in 2019, Deputy Police Chief Marc Loftus said Thursday. He said he had looked through the department's system.

On New Year's Eve, the police department cited a Burr Ridge woman on a charge of violating a law barring ground-feeding of wildlife. She had been warned in the past that she was violating that law, police said. An officer said he saw fresh feed on top of recently fallen snow at the woman's house in the 7800 block of Forest Hill Drive. The woman's citation was $25.

After Burr Ridge Patch wrote a story about the citation, commenters on Facebook said the woman's feed had attracted coyotes to the neighborhood. In an interview, Loftus said he was unable to confirm that the feed was drawing coyotes. He said over the last year, the police department received calls about loose dogs and injured deer and raccoons, but nothing about coyotes.

Coyotes in Illinois have been in the news the last few days. On Wednesday afternoon, a 5-year-old boy suffered lacerations to his head when he was reportedly bitten several times by a coyote on Chicago's North Side. Hours after that attack, a 32-year-old man was walking on a sidewalk on the North Side when a coyote came from behind and bit him in the buttocks.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources said coyotes typically "do more good than harm where humans are concerned," although they occasionally kill livestock and domestic pets.

"Attacks on humans are extremely rare considering the range and abundance of coyotes," according to IDNR. "A study published in 2007 found 187 reliable reports of attacks on humans, most of which (157) occurred in California, Arizona and Nevada. Many of these incidents occurred where people were feeding coyotes intentionally, causing them to lose their fear of humans."