Too Soon To Tell If Coyote Bit Orland Man And Dog: Experts

ORLAND PARK, IL -- Orland Park dog owners are on high alert after a man claims that he and his service dog were attacked by a coyote late Sunday evening. John Greenan said that he and his service dog, Bugs, were walking out of his garage for their evening walk when they confronted a coyote near his front door.

“The coyote lunged at us," Greenan told NBC 5. "At that time, my service dog kind of pushed me back and went after the coyote.”

Greenan said he went around to the side of his town home in the 11800 block of Cormoy Lane and got between Bugs and the coyote when he was bitten. Greenan said it looked like the coyote had what appeared to be a dead rabbit.

Bugs and the coyote rolled around on the ground for a bit, WBBM reported. The last time the coyote tried to bite Greenan, Bugs ran him off.

Deputy Chief Joe Mitchell, of the Orland Park Police Department, confirmed that officers did take a report around 11:06 p.m. Sunday.

“The victim and his dog were walking out of his garage when the coyote came off the front porch,” Mitchell said. “The dog chased the coyote off. At some point John sustained some red marks to his left forearm. The skin was not broken. He refused medical attention.”

Greenan checked Bugs for bite marks, but according to police, the dog did not appear to be injured. Officers recommended that Greenan take his dog to the vet to be checked out. News reports said that Greenan has since received rabies and tetanus shots and is on antibiotics.

Mitchell said his officers took the report. They aren’t disputing Greenan’s claim that he was bitten by a coyote.

Some experts are saying that it's too soon to tell if it was an actual coyote attack or a dog. Chris Anchor, a wildlife biologist for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, said if it was indeed a coyote that snarled and lunged at Greenan and his service dog, it would be a first for the Chicago region.

“Every time we or the police have investigated reports of coyote attacks on humans, it has always turned out to be a dog,” Anchor said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but many instances over the last ten years of people being bitten, every single one turned out to be a dog attack.”

Anchor spent the spring taking blood and tissue samples from coyote puppies and microchipping them. Those pups big enough were fitted with radio collars. The purpose of the research project was to determine the size of the packs’ home range, their reproductive rates, and who the coyotes interacted with. Biologists and other wildlife experts also wanted to track the progression of any diseases that may show up in Chicagoland’s urban and suburban coyote populations.

Anchor estimates said there was no evidence of rabies, distemper or other diseases of the coyotes they examined living in sidewalk cracks, golf courses, viaducts, railroad tracks, cemeteries and forested areas that would embolden one to attack a human.

“We haven’t noted any dire situations in the coyote pups we’ve sampled recently or at least the last few years,” he said. “They have been remarkably fit. A few of them have had mange.”

In a research paper published last fall, a pair of university professors from California, compiled 165 bona fide coyote attacks on Californians between 1977 and 2015, which resulted in injuries. Of those attacks, 78 were on adults and 64 on children age 10 and under. The professors noted that 17 percent of those attacks involved the presence of people walking their dogs and/or within yards where dogs were present.

Outside California, the professors documented 141 coyote attacks in 25 states, and 61 attacks in seven Canadian provinces since the early 1990s and 2000s. The attacks resulted in injuries to 131 adults and 75 children. Of the 367 combined attacks documented in California, other U.S. states and Canada, only two fatalities were recorded over a span of time, a 3-year-old child from Glendale, CA, in 1981, and, a 19-year-old woman hiking through a national park in Nova Scotia in the late fall of 2009.

The Urban Coyote Research Project, which keeps track of the 2,000-plus coyotes estimated to be living in the Chicago area, claims on its website that there hasn’t been “a single coyote bite or attack reported on humans in northeastern Illinois.”

Anchor says the United States averages between 3.5 million and 5 million dog attacks per year, compared to records of all the actual documented coyote attacks over the last 10 to 20 years.

“You’re far more likely to be bitten by your dog or your neighbor’s dog that you are by a coyote,” Anchor said. “It’s definitely something that needs to be investigated, but at this point I wouldn’t call it a coyote attack.”

~ Patch file photo