CW Nevius, today in the San Francisco Chronicle

Remember the whole schemozzle with the coyotes in Golden Gate Park? The schemozzle that led me to write Dark in the Park which, entre nous, my excellent agent adores and will be getting off on editorial submission momentarily?

I had a very nice telephone interview with CW Nevius, San Francisco Chronicle columnist extraordinaire, this past Friday. He was doing a follow-up op-ed piece on the coyote story.

Here's the piece in question. I'm first up.

It's a very good piece indeed. I'd make one correction, one addition, and one observation:

1. The correction: The two coyotes that were shot last year weren't randomly aggressive. They didn't attack a poor helpless little doggy for fun. They came out of their lair to defend their pups (there were two; one was hit by a car, trying to fend for itself after its parents were killed).

And by the way, the dog, which got too close to their lair, was off-leash. Why this dog's owner wasn't cited and fined, I'll never know. If you own a dog, and you take it out of doors in a city with leash laws, keep it on a damned leash. Your dog does not have more rights than the human beings - or the coyotes, or the cats, or the raccoons, or anything else - around it. (And if the Animal Rights types don't like it, tough crap. It's the law, and the way it is.)

2. The addition: The mini-pack we saw crossing JFK Drive weren't just crossing the road. They hit the raceway next to the garage entrance at 10th Avenue and headed out across Fulton Street (four lanes of traffic), and into the avenues. They were streaking for the neighbourhoods, the backyards.

3. The observation: Two opposing comments from the people concerned:

"So, you say, maybe they could trap it. Maybe you'd like to try, they reply."

and a bit later on,

"Ask him what's next, and Merkle begins tap dancing. He says GGNRA authorities are "kind of at a decision point" and "kind of on the fence" but admits they "might have to take an action to remove an animal."

Um, guys? One of these things is not like the other. What's with the extremes? There's a middle ground, called TNR. In the case of the coyotes, The "T" in "trap, neuter, release" would stand for "tranquilise" instead.

Between trying to trap a large, fierce, smart predator in a state of full awareness and putting a bullet in that same animal's head, there's another option: knock it out, spay it, release it. Control the population that way. It works for feral cats.

And I maintain, loud and clear, that if some yippekayay cowboy can point a rifle at an animal's head, he can damned well point a tranq gun at its flank instead.